Rumors of the death of POTS is not exaggerated. The Internet is the connecting glue for the public to share thoughts socially and privately. If we are going to build a new model for the future we have to determine the bottlenecks. While many people are clear that its time to kill the regulatory rules of POTS and move people to the next generation of the Internet. This discussion is about the Public Access Nuetral Solutions [PANS]. We will talk about the impact of the cloud and the migration from end to end to any to any services; about supporting access and quality of service; about Net Neutrality and Privacy. And we will ask what is the right framework for the future of communication.

Today’s enterprise networks are fast becoming totally unmanaged and uncontrolled. With the proliferation of smart devices, softphones, remote and/or mobile employees, the conventional definition of perimeter security is loosening by the day.

Stakeholders must understand that, while these enriched VoIP/UC environments present great promise, they also present unique enterprise deployment and security requirements that are much different than conventional data applications or carrier environments. Communication networks that have traditionally been secured by physical or virtual separation from the rest of the network are now unexpectedly exposed to a multitude of issues related to the convergence of data and communications traffic. Security and network administrators need to integrate visibility, control, protection and analytics functions for monitoring and securing real-time voice, video and UC&C traffic.

SIP Trunking and hosted UC/VoIP delivery models are also gaining prominence within enterprises, adding to the complexity. Without adequate security, enterprise SIP resources can become vulnerable to Internet-based attacks. The internal enterprise network topology and addresses need to be hidden (and properly translated) between its private addresses and their corresponding public IP counterparts. Signaling between the enterprise and the ITSP can be vulnerable to disruption and spoofing. Unencrypted traffic between the enterprise and the ITSP can be subject to eavesdropping and impersonation. Voice/UC traffic can be subject to interruption due to bandwidth contention on integrated access links. Rising vulnerabilities and thousands of threat vectors can cause unexpected downtimes on IP PBX and server crashes, endpoints, lost services, QoS issues, and loss of reputation.

As such, adequate visibility and controls at these UC/VoIP services becomes very important in order to ensure network efficiency and service quality and availability, and to prevent malicious anomalies.

This session will discuss the role of Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) is this capacity. Traditionally, E-SBCs were seen as just providing firewalling protection – the security – for SIP-based voice networks. Today’s E-SBCs do indeed provide that security but have also evolved to serve as a crucial element in enabling SIP deployments. This session will discuss the role of the E-SBC, it functions, and why it is such an important part of the UC puzzle.

Who cares if you have 500,000 Fans on Facebook and 700,000 Followers on Twitter? When was the last time they contributed to your bottom line or increased your stock price? We know it’s hard to measure, but with almost 95% of Facebook fans not returning once they have “Liked” a company we wouldn’t assume too much. However, there is hope. When companies talk with fans and detractors on social media they see an increase on the average amount they spend by 20% - 30%. These users are also likely to talk to their friends and with the right tools they will have an enjoyable interaction and may even act as a brand ambassador for you. Social media isn’t just for building customer loyalty anymore, it’s an important part of achieving serious business objectives.

The session will feature a case study on how an international performing artist and how an international retailer turned their communities into a viral sales army in a sustainable and systemized way.

What do cloud-based services mean for the enterprise? With today’s businesses perpetually in search of ways to save on costs and improve the quality of their communications network, cloud computing makes viable and financial sense. Cloud computing provides companies flexibility of resource allocation while simultaneously enabling growth through dynamic pay-as-you-grow service options.

This session will discuss how cloud networking and virtualization enable flexible options for enterprises at many stages along the cloud-based services continuum, detailing how clouds require the right infrastructure design to meet the specific needs of the companies deploying them. Whether it’s an enterprise cloud, Software-as-a-Service, hosted solution, private connectivity, or more, each has its own unique requirements to support its users.

Though there are multiple ways to design a cloud, the key elements remain the same:
• Infrastructure and proximity to networks
• Connectivity to points in the network
• A managed, secure and reliable solution

In today’s changing IT landscape, the need for service providers to differentiate offerings from their peers is now more important and competitive than ever. At the same time, the average SMB’s network is becoming more and more sophisticated due in large part to the rapid adoption rates of migrating to cloud and virtual environments. As a result, service providers also carry added responsibilities in terms of executing effective services to assist in the growing needs of their customers.

This session will exploring the daunting challenges that face IT service providers today, including:
• Finding the time to create complex service offerings
• Keeping up with the competition
• Differentiating services with new value-adds
• Integrating/layering services on top of existing technologies
• Finding the “sweet spot” pricing model
• Being able to demonstrate value

Today’s enterprise networks are fast becoming totally unmanaged and uncontrolled. With the proliferation of smart devices, softphones, remote and/or mobile employees, the conventional definition of perimeter security is loosening by the day.

Stakeholders must understand that, while these enriched VoIP/UC environments present great promise, they also present unique enterprise deployment and security requirements that are much different than conventional data applications or carrier environments. Communication networks that have traditionally been secured by physical or virtual separation from the rest of the network are now unexpectedly exposed to a multitude of issues related to the convergence of data and communications traffic. Security and network administrators need to integrate visibility, control, protection and analytics functions for monitoring and securing real-time voice, video and UC&C traffic.

SIP Trunking and hosted UC/VoIP delivery models are also gaining prominence within enterprises, adding to the complexity. Without adequate security, enterprise SIP resources can become vulnerable to Internet-based attacks. The internal enterprise network topology and addresses need to be hidden (and properly translated) between its private addresses and their corresponding public IP counterparts. Signaling between the enterprise and the ITSP can be vulnerable to disruption and spoofing. Unencrypted traffic between the enterprise and the ITSP can be subject to eavesdropping and impersonation. Voice/UC traffic can be subject to interruption due to bandwidth contention on integrated access links. Rising vulnerabilities and thousands of threat vectors can cause unexpected downtimes on IP PBX and server crashes, endpoints, lost services, QoS issues, and loss of reputation.

As such, adequate visibility and controls at these UC/VoIP services becomes very important in order to ensure network efficiency and service quality and availability, and to prevent malicious anomalies.

This session will discuss the role of Enterprise Session Border Controllers (E-SBCs) is this capacity. Traditionally, E-SBCs were seen as just providing firewalling protection – the security – for SIP-based voice networks. Today’s E-SBCs do indeed provide that security but have also evolved to serve as a crucial element in enabling SIP deployments. This session will discuss the role of the E-SBC, it functions, and why it is such an important part of the UC puzzle.

‘Customer experience’ means more than just the interaction at the point of sale. Harvard Business Review defines it as “the internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company.

With that in mind, plus smaller operating budgets and limited staff, businesses are struggling to find ways to connect and engage with their customers. It is important to know what kinds of tools are out there and when and how to best use them. Tools such as Hosted IVR automates interactions with customers, giving businesses access to the information (good and bad) about their services in a reliable, cost-effective way.

This session will provide a look at the world of Automated Customer Communication technologies, exploring the tools available to efficiently and effectively engage with customers. Panelists will provide attendees with tips and tricks and best practices for engaging with their customers in real time, and how best to utilize their feedback.

IDC predicts that 75 percent of U.S. workers will be mobile by 2013. The shift in using wireless devices at work is impacting how businesses operate with fragmented interactions and lost sales from customers trying to reach companies through mobile devices that aren’t connected to the central office.

This session will discuss how enterprises are continuing to evolve as more functionality moves to the cloud and how the answer to enhancing the mobility and flexibility businesses need as adoption of wireless devices accelerates lies in the cloud. Panelists will also discuss current trends in mobility and explain how the current smartphone revolution is fueling the growth of the 3rd wave of mobility, and how enterprise architectures must evolve to meet those demands.

The tantalizing promise of cloud computing is carefree IT, honed to enterprise needs, and quick to react to changing business circumstances. One of the key attributes of cloud computing is the usage model: customers consume resources as a service and pay only for what they use – the pay as you go concept. Yet, the essential issue of billing is often overlooked, despite it being key to providing enterprise customer savings while enabling providers to monetize their capabilities. What are the cloud billing issues and what should an enterprise be looking for from a cloud computing provider? The session examines this question as well as the underlying billing flexibility needed in the evolving cloud.

Building a successful UC business case remains elusive. Most companies still rely on soft metrics, such as user satisfaction to evaluate UC success. This session will discuss how to develop a successful UC business case, including examples of real-world tangible benefits of UC adoption based on data gathered from more than 200 end-user organizations.

Social media has become not only a fixture within everyday life, but a key component of how organizations conduct business today. Social media engagements need to be productive customer dialogues that create a positive experience and deliver significant results. Organizations, however, need to understand the techniques in integrating these social channels. They need to learn how to effectively manage the interactions with today’s hyper-connected consumers, who have quickly adopted and rely on social media not only in communications with peers but also in the quest for answers about products and services.

Most companies that deal with customer contact today understand that social media interactions have the potential to be identified through social media monitoring tools. Relevant and actionable interactions can be identified based on predefined criteria, which include relevant search terms, keywords, followers or perceived sentiment. What many are not taking into account, however, is the need for a solution that can also productively respond, plan for, and measure social media interactions. To truly meet the expectations of today’s consumer, contact centers must employ a combination of unified communications, collaboration and social media functionality, along with workforce optimization capabilities.

Such workforce capabilities ensure that this new channel can be compared to and put in the context of the total engagement strategy, providing richer data for consolidated analysis and more valuable reporting and analysis for Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Email alerts can be integrated to workforce management capabilities, enabling optimal forecasting and staffing levels and business rules for intelligent routing can be put in place based on agents’ social media skills.

There is a unique opportunity for businesses to manage the total customer experience with social media in the contact center. This session will expose attendees to proven strategies for integrating social media into the contact center.

Due to government regulations in most countries around the world, an enterprise’s data needs to reside in the region where it is produced. This session will focus on this “proximity paradox” and what it means for enterprises.

Some key points will include:
• Data needs to reside in the region where it is produced
• There is competitive advantage in having data closer to end users, better performance, less latency in applications.
• Latency threshold and bandwith issues of specific vertical markets.
• Service providers who want to expand globally can connect within a carrier and cloud neutral data center for fastest deployment.
• Distributed computing (mini-clouds at different data centers instead of one large one at one data center) is the best way to go since it provides cost saving (no big pipes), best performance and keeps data in region
• Enterprises exporting their services globally is a strategy to help balance the books as organizations not ruled by one economy

Networks are the essential part of any modern communications and must deliver reliability, availability and high performance. Access to these networks is where the rubber truly meets the road in the meaningful provisioning of telecom products and services. In order for telecommunications to work, networks must be accessible and provide a seamless connection, across town, or across the globe. The problem, however, is that networks aren’t seamless and they aren’t always easily accessible.

These realities are magnified when considering cloud-based applications and the ability to provide access to these applications, virtually, from anywhere. If the underlying infrastructure is fragmented, too small, or too expensive, cloud-based technologies can’t get off the ground. Often these critical networks are owned by multiple operators who may only control a fraction of the overall capacity. They can be uncharted and unknown. Therefore, managing the procurement and provisioning of access network interconnections remains one of the biggest sources of indigestion for cloud-based solutions providers.

The result is that many network dependent industry players today look at their current service territory as the last frontier – the only potential growth market outside of M&A. They look to their current footprint and try to figure out how to sell to the customers that line their existing local access relationships or the central offices in which they are already interconnected, effectively closing their doors (and profit potential) to markets and geographies that aren’t proximate to existing service territories.

As more telecom carriers and end-users are looking to expand beyond their traditional borders both physically and virtually, efficient and economical network procurement, access, management and custom engineering has become paramount to getting business done. A successful solution means standardizing procurement and provisioning processes – automating a process that has traditionally been painstakingly manual, expensive, and ineffective. This session will address network procurement and provisioning barriers and provide key insights into the solutions designed to solve these issues.

Discussion of the current movement towards cloud computing and the increase in the adoption rate for Unified Communications as a Service. The session will cover the market data supporting the interest and growth and consider the key value propositions and benefits SMBs and enterprises can expect by moving to UCaaS as an alternative to other unified communications alternatives.

Social media usage continues to grow at a nearly exponential rate across ALL demographics. And, their expectations and the way the use social media is changing.

Recent surveys indicate that as many as 50% of all social media users now want to be able to use social media to request and receive customer service, technical support, sales support, even conduct transactions. To support this type of activity requires the ability to do more than just monitor social media activity. It requires the ability to respond and resolve issues using a social media channel.

This combination of exponential growth and changing consumer expectations has created some big challenges for individuals charged with a implementing and executing a company’s social media response strategy:
• How do I cost effectively manage and respond to the large and ever increasing volumes of social media interactions?
• How do I meet response time expectations and increasing demands of social media users?
• How do I safely and securely provide customer service, technical support, sales support, and even transactions using social media based communications — while maintaining a personal, friendly, and engaging tone and “feel.”

The answer is social media response management — a new set of strategies, tools, and practices that are providing the answers to those questions.

Today’s enterprise is going wireless, and workers want and need to connect to the network wherever they are. Not only do most employees have more than one device that “speaks” WiFi, but guests, clients, vendors and suppliers need wireless access on site as well. Enterprises are faced with the challenge of scaling their network to accommodate greater coverage, higher throughput, more users and wider mobility. Without a flexible, yet efficient wireless solution, organizations won’t be able to keep up and cost-effectively adopt new devices into their processes.

Suppliers have evolved the WLAN from a controller-based architecture to a 4th Generation, controller-less WLAN solution that eliminates cost and scale constraints by leveraging virtualization for advanced control via the cloud.

This session will consider Cloud Virtualization and its impression on the enterprise wireless model and how the Cloud delivery of WLAN will obsolete controller-based implementation and reset the market through:

• Maximum network scalability, reliability and security
• Centralized control
• Applied security policies at the edge
• Reliable support for hitless control plane failover
• Reduction of power use and carbon footprint by 80%

Attendees will learn how to leverage the economic scale capabilities of virtualization, and evolve their WLANs for the future.

Service providers typically add more bandwidth when their links average between 40% to 50% utilization. Enterprises live a little closer to the edge, pushing utilization closer to between 60% and 70% before upgrading. Either way you look at it, managing your network this way means wasting between 30% and 60% of available bandwidth. Ask anyone outside of IT if it’s a good business decision to upgrade a link that is only half used – you will be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks this make sense.

Well, network management is not nearly as simple as looking at utilization numbers, and there are good reasons why the industry currently works this way. The problem is, budgets are decreasing, but demand for results and capacity are increasing. Furthermore, there is an explosion of non-business critical traffic that floods the networks today. The processes and procedures we used to manage networks yesterday are not up to the challenges of today.

Fortunately, with new days, there are also new ways of thinking. This session will consider different solutions for efficient network management. Rather than looking at port utilization as the upgrade driver, network managers more effectively meet the needs of their business by focusing on application demand. In fact, this paradigm shift makes it possible run at near 100% utilization while still guaranteeing predictable business critical application performance. Cost savings alone would make this worth it, but intelligently managing by application demand also ensures excellent end-user experience – something also very high in demand.

Michael A. Rouleau serves as Senior Vice President – Business Development and Strategy and has been with tw telecom since November 1999. His extensive experience in the telecom and data communications industries resulted in the successful implementation and delivery of many advanced and innovative products. In his current position, Mr. Rouleau is responsible for developing tw telecom’s strategic direction and integrating new services and technologies over the next several years. Prior to joining the company, he spent 15 years with US WEST where he was responsible for the development, deployment and management of data, Internet, and DSL businesses.

Despite all the hype and proven benefits surrounding public cloud services, many believe there is a dark side to the current darling of the computing industry, especially when it comes to unified communications. This session will consider the private cloud alternative in Unified Communications implementations, discussing why it is an attractive options for many businesses, while also pointing out the red flags. Panelists will discuss specific shortcomings of public clouds that need to be considered against business and technology requirements in order to properly assess whether a given UC application and/or accompanying piece of IT infrastructure is suited for deployment in the cloud. Specifically, the author will cover the following concerns and how to weigh them against a company's individual needs: reliability and availability, downtime recovery, security, customization, migration, and new management challenges.

The call center interaction remains at the heart of the customer service experience for most consumer-facing companies. Today, that interaction continues to suffer from flaws that annoy callers and raise costs for companies: annoying phone menus, waiting on hold and repeating information to agents, etc. But the call center is about to undergo a radical change. This change is being powered by the growing impact of social media, the proliferation of smartphones and the rising expectations of today's consumer.

Consider how most calls begin: The ubiquitous phone menu (IVR) is supposed to connect callers with the right agent, but frequently results in the caller “zeroing out,” which helps nobody. In fact, several third-party Web sites and mobile apps are devoted to helping callers “cheat” their way through the menus. This is clearly not a healthy way to start a conversation.

Consider another common flaw: The caller is prompted by the IVR to provide information but then, when connected to the agent, he has to repeat the same information. This leads to more caller frustration and much wasted agent time.

Why do these flaws persist, despite the clear damage to the caller experience and the added cost to the company? Here are some of the reasons: 1) Call centers are built on proprietary systems which makes innovation difficult, 2) the call center function is often outsourced to a 3rd party (or multiple 3rd parties), 3) There are no interoperability standards between call centers. These are all deeply ingrained problems that are not going to be solved in the near future.

This session will consider opportunities for fixing common call center flaws and why the time is right to do so.

Companies considering cloud solutions need to consider a variety of factors when evaluating potential benefits for the organization. SaaS-based solutions that appeal to an organization’s bottom line should be weighed against scalability potential as the company grows. This session will detail several implementation strategies that have been successfully deployed by cloud adopters in offsetting risk and optimizing productivity for cloud networking solutions. Effective ways for ROI calculations will help attendees make better-informed decisions on the actual cost and savings of cloud computing vendor solutions.

Analyst firm Gartner predicts cloud services brokerage will represent the single largest revenue growth opportunity in cloud computing through 2015. Consequently, service providers are feeling pressure to launch cloud-based offerings to help generate additional revenue. But, how can you monetize the cloud? As many companies quickly learn, it's not as easy as simply racking servers or SKU-ing software.

Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” cloud solution for end users. Resellers and service providers must build a broad portfolio of cloud services and solutions so they can tailor solutions to meet the specific needs of each end user.

This session will outline best practices for building a complete cloud portfolio – an end-to-end offering that includes hardware, software, services and consulting alongside access to private and public clouds.

What Attendees Will Learn
• Tips and best practices for building a complete cloud portfolio
• Tools and services needed to be successful
• Revenue opportunities associated with the cloud

Hosted IP PBX? Cloud-based voice services? On-premises PBX? These are the questions businesses are asking today as they seek to find the best solution for their communications needs. Selecting the wrong solution can wreak havoc on their budgets, employees, and even customers. But, the right solution depends on an enterprise’s needs and includes factors such as cost, resources and infrastructure, reliability, and customizability. This session will discuss the triumphs and pitfalls of hosted versus cloud versus on-premises solutions by exploring the vital questions, such as:

• Does the company need a system that’s easy to deploy and manage?
• Do the IT staff have the time and technical expertise to administer and manage a solution?
• Does the company fluctuate in size, or is it in growth mode?
• Do employees require access on-site, from home, or while traveling?
• Is the company in an area prone to natural disasters?
• How rapidly do you adopt new technology?
• How reliable and secure are the hardware and services?
• What kind of features and accessibility does the company need?
• Must the solution comply with government or other legal regulations?
• How much IT staff time can be dedicated to communications?

Answers will differ from a 50-person firm with a single office, or a 1,000-person enterprise with six remote offices and employees who telecommute. This session is designed to walk attendees through critical questions to ask service providers, and discuss which solutions best met certain needs.

You all know mobile communications is exploding beyond most industry analysts’ highest expectations. The numbers of mobile devices are rapidly increasing and their features are constantly changing to meet or beat the competition.

Mobile users are demanding that their devices serve all their needs for communication. For example, many are no longer buying both a laptop and a cell phone. They’re buying one mobile device, such as a smartphone, to serve their fast-paced lives. And they want the latest features with seamless integration of the technologies now.

In the not-too-distant future, simultaneously SEEing and HEARing information on a smartphone will be commonplace. Why? It’s a fact that people comprehend over 50 percent more when they both see and hear information. When would it be especially useful to both see and hear information on a mobile call? Some real-life cases:

• A field technician needs help to repair an older, less-common device at a customer’s home; he calls the 2nd-tier support specialist who sends him very specific diagrams while explaining how to make the repair. The field tech saves the diagrams to complete the successful installation. The result? The field tech had a successful first-call resolution that saved time and money for the company.
• A post-surgery nurse calls a patient to discuss her discharge and follow-up instructions. While talking, the nurse sends an X-Ray of the damaged joint, a copy of the prescription that was sent to the patient’s pharmacy, graphics of exercises that she’s to do daily, and a schedule of appointments. The patient saves the visual information for future reference. She’s able to comply with the follow-up instructions and avoids a visit to the surgeon’s office, saving herself from a difficult trip and her insurance another bill.
• A customer calls to purchase concert tickets. The ticket agent sends a venue map and views of the stage from variously priced areas in the stadium. The customer realizes he wants to see the musicians better and purchases the upgraded seats. He saves the ticket numbers with bar codes on his smartphone for fast entry into the venue. The ticket agent sold two higher-priced tickets to a happier customer.

In this session, attendees will learn how to improve the customer experience by transforming their Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems into Interactive Visual Response systems and get rid of a universal pain point – long, frustrating phone trees. Strategies will be discussed for interacting more effectively with the growing number of on-the-go smart mobile device users who use social media and other modes of communication, and how businesses can actually lower operating costs and increase customer satisfaction in the process.

Whether large or small, public or private, commercial or government, all organizations need to proactively ensure their IT infrastructure, systems, network, applications and data are secure and in compliance with applicable laws, regulations and best practices. Securing the enterprise ensures an organization’s ability to operate, service their customers and protect their reputation in the marketplace. Given the diverse ways organizations rely upon IT and how IT-based services are delivered, risks and threats, as well as opportunities for improvement, are multi-faceted and complex. This session will focus on the drivers for sound IT Risk Management and Security, the most common weaknesses and threats found within enterprises, as well as cloud-based offerings and how to mitigate risks though best practice approaches. The presentation will impart practical guidance learned as a result of hundreds of IT security audits and IT operational reviews, and from the experience of delivering comprehensive IT services and support to hundreds of organizations.

As the Unified Communications market continues to grow and more service providers enter the market to meet the needs of end users – and as end user adoption continues to increase – the channel must align itself with these same trends and ensure they can provide end users with the latest solutions. As the channel embraces hosted solutions like UC, it’s important for service providers to create Certification Programs, not only to educate channel partners and help broaden their expertise and technical backgrounds, but also help the service provider community by creating mandatory, industry recognized standards for providing cloud-based services to end users.

Education is crucial if the channel community is ever going to fully leverage the cloud. It’s no longer a matter of selling on cost, but more about selling on the benefits of these solutions. Channel partners need to literally change the way they are selling. By putting industry standards and guidelines in place, and working closely with the channel to provide them with the necessary tools they need to be successful, service providers can further extol the benefits of a cloud-based solution.

Paget L. Alves is the President of the Business Markets Group (BMG) for Sprint Nextel. He is responsible for all of Sprint's sales and marketing to enterprise, general business and public sector customers. The Business Markets Group's portfolio of services includes IP, international wireless and wireline and domestic 3G and 4G wireless. As part of his BMG responsibilities, Paget also oversees the development of strategic alliances for Sprint.

Prior to his current position, Alves was the President of Sales & Distribution for Sprint Nextel. Previously, he served as President - South Region for Sprint, with responsibility for managing the P&L, all sales and distribution channels and local marketing programs in an 11-state region.

Alves has more than 20 years of experience with technology companies. In addition to his Sprint career, he has served as President & Chief Executive Officer of the Internet telephony services provider PointOne Telecommunications, Inc., President & Chief Operating Officer of Centennial Communications and Executive Vice President & Chief Operating Officer of Murata Business Systems, Inc. He began his career as an attorney with IBM.

His business and professional affiliations include his current role as a member of the Board of Directors of Herman Miller, Inc., a global provider of office furniture.

In November of 2008, Alves was recognized for his leadership and success in business and community endeavors with the CareerFOCUS Eagle Award, presented by the National Eagle Leadership Institute.

Alves holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Cornell University and a Juris Doctor degree from Cornell Law School.

Rick Svensson is a Senior Director of Wireless Networks with Samsung Telecommunications America (STA). He joined Samsung in 2005 and leads the sales team responsible for securing both the Clearwire 4G and Sprint Network Vision contracts. . He has had several public speaking engagements on behalf of Samsung ranging from appearances at Mobile World Congress to 4G World and LTE North America.

Rick has over 22 years of diverse sales and business development experience in the global wireless communications industry. Prior to joining Samsung he held various management positions with Nortel Networks and Ericsson while calling on wireless operators in both North America and Southeast Asia.

Rick was born and raised in Sweden. He currently resides outside of Washington DC, but has been based in Dallas, Kansas City and Stockholm. He has a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Linkoping Technical University.

Session description coming soon.

Typically, only the largest and most profitable contact centers are able to afford the flexibility, security, and scalability offered by enterprise-class technology providers. However, the needs of the smaller contact centers are far from “small.” In fact, operations of lesser size must be more creative to stay competitive, driving associate efficiency and customer loyalty from every possible angle, and making their needs more urgent, specific, and complex.

To succeed in the modern marketplace, management teams require multi-channel delivery and faster response times in order to respond quickly and accurately to constantly evolving customer demand. This necessitates an increased need for blended channels, CRM integration, and self-service technologies (IVR, SMS, the Internet), as well as a thorough mastery of emerging contact channels like Social Media.

Until the emergence of the Cloud, the technologies required to meet the challenges of the modern marketplace remained out of reach for small and mid-sized operations due to cost. In this interesting and informative session, panelists will discuss how moving contact center operations to the Cloud helps any size operation keep pace with growing customer and productivity demands while returning a strong return on investment.

Although cloud providers are seeing increasing numbers of enterprises adopting cloud services, many of these organizations have been hesitant about committing more business-critical applications, data, and services to the cloud due to potential downtime and performance problems. Adding to this uncertainty is cloud providers that have been slow to ensure the quality of cloud performance through customer SLAs. Providers are concerned about the costs needed to ensure cloud uptime and whether customers would be willing to pay for improvement. Furthermore, since cloud providers currently do not offer any performance SLAs, there is little incentive for the industry to do more than match each other.

Perhaps enterprise caution is justified since many high-profile cloud providers have seen outages or significant performance degradation in the past year. These outages are most often caused by wrong configurations, service enabler outages, controller failures, link failures and server/router outages. In most instances, the root of the outage often goes unchecked, often compounded by human error, and the issue slowly snowballs into a major outage that can last for several days or even weeks – a potential disaster for customers that have entrusted important applications, data, and services to the cloud.

In this unpredictable landscape, enterprises need a comprehensive strategy to monitoring and managing cloud service delivery. Attendees will:

• Learn how a proactive cloud management approach enables their organization to improve and protect overall service availability from their provider
• Take away valuable information on what to ask and expect of their cloud service providers in the area of expected v. guaranteed service quality (SLAs), reliability improvements, security initiatives, and what tools and capabilities are provided to monitor and manage services
• Leave understanding how visibility across the service delivery path - network, service enablers, controllers, servers, storage and the applications affects the cloud performance they are receiving and paying for.

Service providers are constantly seeking both top line and bottom line advantages; this is particularly true for highly competitive converged service offerings to small-medium businesses and enterprise branch offices. The emergence of Carrier Ethernet technologies as a preferred access technology for managed cloud services enables service providers to realize revenue growth, operational savings and the ability to develop a roadmap of strategic services that will leverage the bandwidth and cost advantages of Carrier Ethernet. The panel will explore how the combination of Carrier Ethernet and cloud services are enabled, the advantages for the SMB and enterprise branch office end user, and the service provider's perspective for strategic services, such as cloud-based services, are enabled by Carrier Ethernet.

Mr. Gates currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer at Xirrus. He brings more than 15 years of executive management experience to Xirrus as well as a track record of success evolving a high-tech startup into a world class, publicly traded company. Having founded Xircom, Inc. in 1988 on the premise of delivering Ethernet connectivity to mobile computers, he attracted venture funding from Greylock, grew the company to 2,000 employees, and achieved revenues of $500M and a market cap in excess of $2B.

During his tenure as Chairman and CEO, Mr. Gates led Xircom into the wireless arena through partnerships and acquisitions that positioned the company to deliver mobility solutions based on IEEE 802.11, GPRS and BlueTooth technologies. He subsequently negotiated the sale of Xircom to Intel Corp. in March of 2001.

Mr. Gates holds a BSEE from California State University at Northridge and an MBA from Pepperdine University.

Julius P. Knapp II is the chief of the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) Office of Engineering Technology (OET). OET is the Commission’s primary resource for engineering expertise and provides technical support to the Chairman, Commissioners and FCC Bureaus and Offices.

Mr. Knapp was named Chief of OET in October 2006, succeeding Ed Thomas who left the previous year, although he was the acting chief for some time before that. He became the Deputy Chief of OET in May 2001. Prior to that he was the Chief of the Policy & Rules Division where he was responsible for FCC frequency allocation proceedings and for proceedings amending the FCC rules for radio frequency devices. Mr. Knapp was Chief of the FCC Laboratory from 1994–1997 where he was responsible for the FCC’s equipment authorization program and technical analyses.

Mr. Knapp received a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the City College of New York in 1974. He is a member of the IEEE EMC Society and is a Fellow of the Radio Club of America. He was the 2001 recipient of the Eugene C. Bowler award for exceptional professionalism and dedication to public service and received the FCC’s Silver and Gold medal awards for distinguished service at the Commission.

As 4G mobile networks continue to be rolled out and new devices are adopted by end users, mobile video conferencing is becoming an increasingly important component in today’s Unified Communications ecosystem. The ability to deliver enterprise-grade video conferencing including high definition voice, video and data-sharing will be critical for those playing in this space. Mobile video solutions require vendors to consider a number of issues including interoperability with new and traditional communications platforms as well as mobile operating systems, user interfaces that maximize the experience, and the ability to interoperate with carrier networks. This session will explore the business-class mobile video platforms available it the market today as well as highlight some end-user experiences with these technologies.

It’s clear -- your customers are turning to social media to provide feedback to and about your brand. Recent research highlights this trend where 64% of social media users indicated that more responsive brands on social networks would benefit from greater loyalty and purchasing. While there is opportunity for companies to improve customer loyalty by being more responsive, businesses struggle to make social media actionable in directing relevant customer input to the front-line staff who could and would resolve issues in real-time if they were kept in the loop. Businesses that fail to adapt to the new online social world could be reaching less that 1% of their unhappy customers.

This session will feature a case study of how a Fortune 1000 restaurant chain improved customer loyalty and quarter over quarter sales through effective social media response management. Highlights include:

• Driving social-mobile customer feedback directly to the store into the hands of the front-line staff for remedial response, action and closure;
• Enabling electronic customer feedback that is succinct, mobile, and in real-time; and
• Providing corporate accountability through visibility, reporting and escalation.

Each day, the volume of electronic data businesses need to store increases, requiring decisions about how to increase storage capacity. Indeed, there is plenty of debate in today’s business world about data solutions and where the best location for it is. Terms like “the cloud” are quickly becoming a part of every day language. But how does the cloud fit into a company’s data solutions? When it comes to whether data should be hosted, stored in a cloud environment, or located on-premises, the answer is not always simple, but the solution must be.

This session will examine each of the three types of data storage: hosted, cloud and on-premises and provide insight into making the right decision for your business’ data needs.

It is becoming undeniable that cloud services represent the fastest growing business opportunity for service providers. Because communications is a central part of any cloud computing solution, telcos have the opportunity to sell cloud solutions, both directly and in conjunction with other companies that provide cloud-based services. To be successful in this evolving market, telcos must embrace the cloud and learn how they can quickly provide their customers with access to new apps and new ways to connect, such as with hosted virtual desktop for tablet computers.

Telcos can already offer services in the public cloud – or consider themselves public cloud providers – and are poised to offer a broad variety of services that includes VoIP and video conferencing where the technology may not be served from their premises. To stand out in the market, telcos need to offer their customers the ability to connect with different packages of services that could include other cloud offerings from Microsoft and Google and they also must offer more connectors to cloud services and be a gateway for existing customers.

This session will look at the opportunities for new business services and new revenue streams that the cloud service market holds for telcos/service providers, and explore the most effective ways for them to capitalize on this potential.

With budget concerns growing and the increasing complexities of business travel, organizations are turning to video communications solutions to enable face-to-face meetings amongst geographically dispersed colleagues. While these legacy solutions give people some of the benefits of meeting in person, they ignore a key component of meeting effectiveness: advanced collaboration capabilities that enhance decision making and improve productivity. This session will explore visual collaboration, an emerging product category that seamlessly integrates advanced collaboration capabilities with HD videoconferencing to give organizations access to the subject matter experts and information sources they need as they need them. It will present use cases of visual collaboration and describe how organizations are speeding and improving decision making and building global teams.

Post event, attendees will be able to:
• Better understand the soft side of ROI for video conferencing.
• Better deploy video conferencing and collaboration technologies to improve productivity
• Better consider the range of capabilities they might include in future video conferencing related RFPs.

As consumers have changed, so has the contact center. Throughout the last 20 years, we have seen a shift not only in technology, but in the mentality of the contact center and those who manage it.

We have evolved from the mindset that contact centers need thousands of agents in order to make sure that every call is being handled to the idea of a single point of contact where one agent is empowered to handle multiple types of queries more efficiently. This is challenging, though, in the fact that many organizations made an intentional effort to employ a large pool of agents that could take any call. But could they handle every call? Consumers today demand a single point of contact that can text, email, chat, join in Web collaboration or even proactively reach out to them before they have to – delivering the right information, being the most important step. These are two drastically different worlds.

This session will consider the evolution of the contact center footprint over time, from hub-and-spoke models to centralized models, and now virtualized multichannel contact centers. Attendees will learn best practices and key ideas for transforming contact centers from traditional operations to optimized resources that drive positive customer engagement.

The adoption of desktop virtualization doubled in the last twelve months and significant growth is projected ahead. Due to the tightened economy, CXOs are requiring detailed ROI analysis from IT leaders on most projects. Independent of the obvious broad benefits offered by virtual desktops, IT teams need to know how to walk through a detailed ROI analysis to get formal approval. In addition to discussing the key benefits and deployment strategies for desktop virtualization, this session outlines the key elements of an ROI analysis and participants leave with a roadmap and sample analysis for getting CXO approval.

HD Voice, despite having been part of VoIP discussions for several years, is an up and coming technology providing significant benefits – not the least of which is dramatic improvements to call quality – to consumers as well as to the overall competitive carrier market. There are also specific benefits that HD Voice provides to those with certain disabilities, such as hearing loss, as the technology enables the call to be less tedious and stressful.

Leveraging the widespread deployment of fiber optic cables and providing dramatic improvements to call quality, HD Voice is the next-generation of voice quality. With vast improvements and wide-deployment of fiber optics, cable companies, mobile operators and telephony service providers are well positioned to embrace HD Voice and to use the service to differentiate themselves. This session will explore the benefits of HD Voice and the rapidly increasing requirements for HD Voice by carriers and business customers.

• Is HD Voice becoming more readily available in the U.S.?
• Why is the U.S. behind in deployment in comparison to other markets?
• How can carriers accelerate their deployment of HD Voice service?
• What services are available?

Many companies are enabling workers to work outside the traditional office environment. Whether they are in the office, at a temporary job site, working from home, in a field office or in hotel room, workers need to be able to connect with employees, customers, partners and prospects as if they were located in the office. New managed services allow your employees to take their corporate phone services with them wherever they go with the functionality to make them just as productive as if they were in the office while containing costs. This session will discuss the features and functionality needed to make any employee mobile and productive.

Discussion will include (but not be limited to) features such as,
• Unified messaging
• Personal auto-attendant
• Find Me/Follow Me
• Simultaneous Ring
• Softphones
• PBX Features

Your service is only as good as the last contact your client made with your agent. In order to enhance the customer experience, you first have to understand the state of that experience now. What training is in place for your agents? How do you know that training is consistent across all agents? What are your issues? Are those issues based in training or performance?

In order to answer these questions, you simply need a method to measure your training and ensure consistency in its delivery. With the use of cloud-based learning management technology, you can do both while also automating compliance certification and cutting training costs and time.

This session will consider how cloud-based learning management technology helps contact centers provide consistent levels of training, identify agent performance issues, cut training costs, and improve the customer experience.

An increasing number of employees are running enterprise applications and storing enterprise data on personal mobile devices, which poses obvious security risks:

• The enterprise data can be lost and/or compromised;
• The enterprise contacts are at risk of being abused by malicious apps;
• All the employees’ personal data can be wiped from the device by the enterprise

Mobile virtualization technology effectively safeguards against these risks by enabling a single mobile device to run two separate, virtualized domains to support both enterprise and personal use in a way that is highly secure. By adding advanced mobile software management capabilities, operators are able to offer an “enterprise managed domain,” giving IT administrators full control over business data and applications on employee devices, while user privacy is protected by running a securely isolated “user managed domain.”

This presentation will address how mobile virtualization benefits all elements of the mobile ecosystem: the OEM is not required to build special devices for the enterprise, but rather markets a single version of each device to market. These devices include virtualization and a single OEM/user domain, allowing the consumer a wide choice of devices to choose from. The consumer purchases a new device and brings it to the enterprise, and the operator is able to offer the enterprise a cloud-based service for provisioning and managing the enterprise applications on the enterprise managed domain.

The FCC has proposed a date of 2018 to sunset the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) and move the nation to an all IP network for voice services. This session will explore the emerging trends in the Telco Cloud with case studies. Learn how traditional telephone companies are adapting to compete and new opportunities for service providers, including leveraging cloud computing and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) systems that are being deployed with scalable commodity hardware to deliver voice and video services including IVR, IVVR, conferencing plus Video on Demand and local CDNs.

Sir Terence Matthews is the founder and Chairman of Wesley Clover, an investment vehicle and holding company. Terry has either founded or funded over 80 companies since 1972 including Newbridge Networks, a company he founded in 1986 and which became a leader in the worldwide data networking industry. In 1972, before launching Newbridge, Terry co-founded Mitel, a world leader in the design and manufacture of enterprise communications solutions. Wesley Clover now has interests in a broad range of next-generation technology companies, real estate, hotels and resorts.

In addition to being the Chairman of Wesley Clover, Terry is also Chairman or Director of a number of private and publicly traded companies.

Terry holds an honours degree in electronics from the University of Wales and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical Engineers and of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 1994, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, and in the 2001 Queen's Birthday Honours, he was awarded a Knighthood. In 2011, he was appointed Patron of the European Cancer Stem Cell Research Institute.

You’ve made the decision to replace your existing communications infrastructure. Whether it’s because you have grown and you need increased scale and more features, or your existing equipment has simply reached end of life, you are faced with a decision: how do I ensure continuity of communications in my branch offices?

Indeed, you have studied and understand the financial benefits the latest and greatest communications platforms and solutions. But have you considered how they will be implemented in your distributed organization? Whether you have two or three similarly sized offices, one main office and dozens of small branches, or any other physical structure, are you sure that you are doing the right things for your remote locations? Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery are front and center when it comes to building a resilient Unified Communications environment.

This session will answer that question and offer insight for business looking to ensure consisten, reliable communications for their multi-site organizations as they deploy SIP-based communications infrastructures.

As businesses decide to use social media and digital communications in their daily operations, they need to understand that what they are doing makes business sense? There is no question social media is a market changer, and a permanent fixture in the business communications landscape. The question is not whether to implement social media strategies, but when and how, so that you are able to engage your customers at their convenience, not yours.

This session will explain why you need a social media strategy and, depending on where you currently stand with regards to strategy and implementation, what your next steps should be in order to ensure a successful implementation and maximum benefits to your customers and, ultimately, your bottom line.

• Where does your company stand with regards to social media strategy?
• Who should be responsible?
• How can you justify the investment to corporate management?
• What products should you consider?
• What are best practices for rolling out your strategy to your workforce?
• How should you determine the effectiveness of your program, including calculating ROI?

Organizations and enterprises today are under constant pressure to reduce operating costs. When considering telecommunications system options hosted and managed services are more frequently under consideration as a cost reducing option. But do they really reduce costs? Only a thorough study of the business needs and all cost factors can truly determine if hosted or managed services will meet those expectations. This, however, is not part of a service provider’s sales rep’s typical procedure.

During this interactive session, attendees will learn and discuss what to look for, what questions to ask and what questions to expect when considering hosted or managed services as an option for their enterprise platform.

A 2011 research survey found that more than 42 percent of global Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are currently deploying or trialing LTE, and an additional 34.2 percent plan LTE network rollouts in the future. There are currently more the 200 operators globally that have committed to LTE. For enterprises, this is welcome news: LTE is clocking blistering download and upload speeds several times greater than what is currently available. As a result, MNOs and other service providers can offer enterprise end users and consumers unified communications applications and Rich Communications Suites (RCS) that dramatically enhance productivity and collaboration – not just to the desktop and office IP phone, but to 4G-enabled tablets and smartphones as well.

It is evident that Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is emerging as a game changer for enterprises in how they will access unified communications services such as videoconferencing, IM & Presence, web collaboration and mobile. By leveraging the all-IP environment that LTE provides, enterprises will be able to more easily and readily use a wide variety of mobile and mobilized UC applications that also include voice, including those embedded in communications-enabled business processes.

These developments do not herald the end of voice for carriers seeking to deliver revenue-generating services to enterprises, but allow carriers to roll out new and compelling services alongside voice. This proposed session will detail:

• Why the market is now primed for VoLTE, and what it means for enterprises
• How VoLTE will enable enterprises to do more with UC applications available on tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices
• How VoLTE can drive uptake and interoperability for high-definition video calling by eliminating the need for users to be on same service.
• How VoLTE switches the model for how enterprise users are identified from device identity to a single communications identity through which they can be reached, regardless of the communication application, voice, video, texting, IM, or device they choose.

Businesses have for years been exploring options around unified communications, including feature set comparisons, delivery model alternatives, and integration with existing technology. They also have started, more recently, to consider what social media means to them – and how they might be able to leverage similar capabilities within their organizations to foster collaboration and teamwork with increased efficiency.

This session will explore the synergies between Unified Communications and Social Media and how a combination of the two can offer measurable benefits to the enterprise community. Panelists will discuss the basic value propositions of UC and Enterprise Social Networking and offer examples how to effectively combine the two for greater value.

Social media is the electronic, global equivalent of a traditional open marketplace, where customers can praise, offer suggestions, or criticize vendors with others listening and adding their supporting thoughts or coming to the defense of the merchants. We have seen several examples of social media being leveraged to influence corporate behavior, which means businesses are starting to recognize the value of social media and are listening. With Facebook creeping closer and closer to the 1 Billion user mark, and Twitter creating a billion tweets weekly, the volume of data that can be collected by businesses through social media channels is massive. The questions is, what do they do with that data? How do they make social media work for them?

This session will look at the data businesses can collect about themselves, their customers, and their competitors via social media channels, and then how to analyze that data and turn it into actionable intelligence – either in response to existing social activity, or as unsolicited outgoing social engagements.

Attendees will find out how and why the social channel is empowering customers to affect companies’ branding and business; how customers are using the power of social media to, often emotionally, communicate their thoughts on brands to the world; and how businesses can leverage this new form of customer engagement to positively impact the bottom line.

Customers looking to implement Enterprise 2.0 technologies can select among a broad variety of competing solutions in an expanding marketplace that now offers point solutions, broad suites, and major infrastructure platforms. Meanwhile, SharePoint has become “a fact of life” in many organizations; but SharePoint is not a panacea, nor the only game in town. Nevertheless, the Enterprise 2.0 technology space has matured to the extent that we can now talk about social and collaboration architectures. However, practitioners, experts, and vendors disagree about what those architectures should look like, and how enterprises should plan for emerging trends and standards. This session will critique current state-of-the-art social and collaborative technologies, as well as analyze market trends shaping next generation platforms.

Analysts and media outlets are talking about it. Your peers and competitors are going to market right now with enticing solutions that include it. Your company may have begun to explore what is possible; your company could even have one or two bundles that include it. Cloud service brokerage is without a doubt the new “it” for service providers and is positioned to bring growth to subscriber bases and tremendous upside to ARPU. Achieving the expected subscriber growth, upside ARPU and beating out the competition for this market will require:

• Segmenting and focusing on the market in a way that elevates your organization to a trusted-advisor for the business customer
• Addressing the broad demands of today’s business customer for a range of SaaS/PaaS solutions using a next-gen OSS back office to on-board, package, order and fulfill the variety of cloud applications
• Bundling your in-house solutions with 3rd party cloud applications, even multiple 3rd-party applications, that create business solutions that no competitor can match

Service providers must prepare their OSS back office to rapidly scale either by utilizing a commercial cloud brokerage PaaS that extends their back office into cloud applications, or by deploying new back office systems that are aware and built to order, fulfill and package cloud applications. This session will highlight the requirements needed in a service providers OSS environment to deliver cloud applications, as well as break down the overall business and cloud markets so that service providers can build an effective plan to rollout next-gen business services and bundles.

Today, businesses are looking for ways to increase productivity and leverage a wide range of integrated communications solutions to drive top-line revenue while optimizing automation efficiencies to lower operational costs. As a result, Unified Communications technology has moved beyond the innovator stage and is now being adopted by businesses of all sizes. As more communications services move into the “cloud,” enterprises are now looking for ways to increase their network efficiency and reduce capital expenditure while staying ahead of the curve.

This session will consider virtualized UC and how, by operating in a virtualized environment, UC capabilities can be delivered in a broader variety of business and deployment scenarios, including:
• Tighter integration with existing IT Infrastructure
• Smaller physical footprint
• Distributed enterprises with the abi.ity to deliver UC functionality to branch locations from a UC Server hosted in the cloud
• Improved business continuity thanks to hosted virtual disaster recovery servers that can be strategically located away from the primary business location.
• Keys to utilizing UC in a virtualized environment to take advantage of several significant cost-saving and revenue-generating benefits

Overlooking social networking tools in the contact center means lost opportunities to drive customer collaboration. Being present with social media gives companies the opportunity to serve customers where they are congregating and communicating. By integrating social media outlets with contact center technologies, tools and processes, you can better leverage the skills, resources and processes already in place to communicate with customers. As with other methods of communication, contact center managers can and should establish metrics and KPI’s for activities on social media outlets. This ensures that social media is used effectively and correctly to improve customer service and support.

Attendees will learn the keys to developing a successful social media strategy, including:

• Customer contact channels never stand still…neither should you!
• Identify where your customers are communicating on social media, and target relevant corporate or public outlets for monitoring.
• Leverage integration to improve the effectiveness and efficiencies of your Contact Center.
• Train agents on the subtleties of effective social media interactions.
• Don't forget tracking and reporting, just like other multimedia channels.

Innovations in cloud computing will continue to “democratize” technology solutions previously inaccessible to some organizations, due to cost and required capital buildout. As IT departments continually evaluate budget allocation, they should expect new cloud vendors and solutions to emerge, enabling greater productivity, efficiency and ROI. This session will discuss experience management, application delivery, cloud service monitoring, WAN optimization, and other elements of the cloud movement, as a unique and ideal solution to support today’s rapidly evolving technology environment.

As more service providers deploy LTE networks, smartphone users will have expanded broadband access – opening up availability to a slew of new services. Complementary to this growth pattern is the increase in cloud-based services, especially for mobile devices. As service providers make this transformation into the cloud, rewriting internal applications and launching new ones, they face many challenges. A core one is gaining increased revenue streams to support infrastructure rollouts. This session will explore these challenges, including real-world examples for addressing models to better manage and improve the bottom line through variable pricing, Quality of Service, traffic prioritization, advertising and more.