Express Computers

I have been seeing the interest in my Cisco posts rise considerably over the months. They are one of the top read posts and though I don’t claim to be an expert in Cisco, I think I can say beyond reasonable doubt what they are trying to acheive in the UC space ( There was an interesting debate going around what UC is all about and is it really worth the hype. Will post about that at a later date)

Anyway, one of my readers who works for Express Computers mailed me giving a brief of Express Computers and I am posting it so that it would help people looking for Cisco gear at a good price.

Express Computer Systems is based out of Irvine, Ca and has been a used
networking hardware reseller since 1993.  For over 13 years they have provided hardware solutions to IT Managers, Universities, and Enterprise Companies worldwide specializing in the Used Cisco aftermarket carrying over 2 million  dollars of on-hand inventory.  Express Computers employs CCNA certified in-house technicians that  test every piece of equipment for sale.

Sounds good to me and if there is something you guys need, these guys might be able to help you.

Cisco can’t win on price!!!

I had a boss who used to boast that he has never lost a deal on price and I always used to wonder whether that was necessarily a good thing. And Cisco is facing that in the Indian markets currently.

I have reasonable knowledge of Cisco’s IP Telephony and IP Contact Center products ( purely at the voice layer and not data layer) and also on how low they can go on price after discounts. I have come across atleast two cases where our guys ( though we are primarily an contact center application development company, sometimes we do system integration as well) have quoted cisco solutions to small contact centers ( 10-15 agents) and even after discounts it is way higher than say an Avaya solution. They came back to me asking whether we can reduce it further and that is when I quoted the title of this post “Cisco can’t win on price”.

The next thing is then how do you convince customers to go for Cisco. Yes, Cisco is an infant in the Contact center space ( I will go a step further and say they are not exactly very mature when it comes to even IP Telephony namely IP PBX). But what is their selling point? I know what it is because I have felt the advantage but it is going to be very difficult to explain that to even the sales guy let alone the customer.

Last week, we were working on Cisco’s Customer Voice Portal (Cisco IVR based on VXML) and there was this unique problem where the VXML browser was not rendering media to the user even though the prompts were being queued at the browser level. Now my first logical thing would have been to suspect the browser ( which incidentally is the Voice gateway as well. Pretty neat stuff from Cisco; using their ingress gateway as VXML gateway) and probably even network congestion. After gazillion hours of work and even more cups of coffee, we finally figured that a database query through Webshere was taking a long time to return the resultset that caused this hogging. ( This might not be too clear a description. Feel free to leave a comment here if you are looking for further inputs on this issue).

The point I am trying to make here, applications and infrastructure are so inter-linked in the IP world that a problem in one can be manifested on the other. This is Cisco’s selling point. They control both. Avaya has no control on the data layer. Let’s say I had the same problem in Avaya IR or Avaya Voice Portal, the issue would have been tossed around between the infrastructure and the applications teams for months without any resolution. Cisco delivers one unified platform. Again good luck explaining this to your sales guy trying to meet his quartely numbers.

Fighting on price will decimate the market. It has happened to the IP PBX companies. We see a lot of them going belly up because of this. Cisco can’t and shouldn’t fight on price. They should fight on features, fight on unified applications, fight on unified management.

Giving it back

Innovations from Google and Cisco are not something new and if I were to write about every time these two innovated, I would be stuck to my keyboard almost every minute of my life.

But when Google and Cisco make an attempt to give back to society, I had to take time from my othersise busy schedule to write it. Google and Cisco are helping UN fight poverty. It makes you feel better that not everybody is chasing money all the time. Sometimes they do try to make the world a better place.

Will be back!!!

If things go according to plans, I should be back in India tomorrow (Tuesday) night. The trip was very succesful and will be a great one if I can get a great deal on a camera :).

The trip was a revelation for me in many ways and I hope to discuss them in future posts. Especially I have some very nice things to say about Cisco, their products and their support. Be tuned.

Nortel’s take on Cisco-Microsoft Partnership

Tehrani has posted Nortel’s Tony Rybczynski reaction on Microsoft-Cisco partnership. What it tells me is that Nortel is not concerned too much about the new found love between Cisco and Microsoft.

It stems from the fact that Steve Ballmer made it very clear that they were on the same page with Nortel and were natural partners. Must have something to do with talks about Microsoft making a bid at Nortel. I predict it’s not going to be too long till we see a formal bid by Microsoft to buy Nortel!!!

Cisco Microsoft Collaboration

I was talking with one of the thought leaders/industry observer in the Unified Communication space and he came up with an interesting theory as to what areas Cisco and Microsoft can collaborate.

As you might already know, last week Steve Balmer and John Chambers decided to set aside differences, as they call it, “for the better good” ( Read “destroy Asterisk”) and work more closely so that they can offer meaningful solutions to the end customer. Based on the discussion I had with the gentleman mentioned above, it became pretty evident that Speech recognition is one such area where they most probably would work together.

Microsoft had a pretty vibrant Speech Recognition development team until one of the senior guys Kai-Fu Lee defected to the other side (Google). People who had been following that story would know of the legal battle that took place between Google and Microsoft when Lee left Microsoft. What is not commonly known though is that Lee was the chief evangelist of the Speech Recognition practice in Microsoft and most of the innovations in MS-Speech was his brain-children.So Microsoft kind of lost steam when he quit. They were already way behind market leader Nuance and this did not help their case. But it looks like they have started to become an active force in this domain. From what I hear, some releases are on the way.

Now about Cisco. Cisco has been way behind in the contact center business and even way behind when it comes to self service technologies ( IVR). Their product suite that includes IP IVR and CVP largely depend on Nuance for the speech recognition platform and licenses. So let’s say a customer wants Cisco CVP with speech recognition. He ends up paying a lot for Nuance licenses and since there is nobody really to challenge Nuance’s position, they have been having a free ride so far.

This is where Cisco and Microsoft could get together. Cisco, like a lot of other Microsoft products, could OEM MS speech and include it as part of its platform. What MS speech lacks today is credibility/customer base and if Cisco can OEM it, it would be a good start for Microsoft. It would help Cisco because the cost to the customer is less and a better value proposition. If Steve and John are going to put their money where their money is, Speech technology would be a good place to start!!!

Most Companies Don’t Understand Call Center Business.

It has become the norm these days that if you are a player in the IP communication space, you think it is just a natural progression to cater to the Call Center needs. And looks like Skype is no exception. Let me get this out on the onset. IP Telephony is NOT the same as IP Contact Center. If you have agents on IP phones (be it Skype/Cisco phones) it does NOT mean you have a contact center solution on IP.

I don’t blame companies that think “Hey, I have a softphone that can do voice/chat. I think I have a call center solution”. Why, because I used to think that too in my previous assignments. Now that I am with a predominantly focussed Call Center solutions provider I understand that there is a vast difference between me making a VoIP call and an agent doing the same.

This is how the progression should be. Companies that have vast expertise in Call Center technolgies ( be it the traditional TDM ACDs/IVRs) must lead the way and adopt IP as their underlying platform not the other way around, where IP companies start providing contact center solutions. The problem with the latter is that, they are just “emulating” the older solutions and as far as I can see there is no real innovation.

Yes, Presence based ACD ( i.e an agent transfers the call to the subject matter expert based on the expert’s availability) is something only an IP solution can offer and I am sure this was based on the presence model that IMs used to offer, but still these applications are the exceptions rather than the norms. For example lets take Cisco’s ICM ( Cisco’s ACD). What does it do that an Avaya AES or AIC does not do from a feature set point of view? Answer is nothing. So where is the innovation?

Now coming to what triggered me to write this post. In the news-item mentioned above, Skype is offering live-chat to customers. OK, so what is so great about that? Who does not give that? What is so “intelligent’ about that? The customer gets to speak to the subject matter expert. Again, so what? It also says that Skype will provide configurations to switch between Audio/Chat windows. That shows how primitive the thinking is. Have Skype’s people ever gone into a Call Center and had a chat with the floor managers? The first thing they want is an unified screen. Any novice will tell you that. What are the integration touch points that Skype provides? Do they have connectors to MS CRM, Siebel CRM? Or are they going to provide even more “configurations” to switch between three windows!!!!

Enterprise Telephony will soon merge into Contact Center Telephony. I envision that happening in the future. But not today and the people who would need to drive it are the experts and not the novices.

Irony : India fights China using the Chinese Model

Rumours have been flying around on this for sometime now but has just been made official. DoT ( The Department of Telecom) is planning to setup a Testing and Certification wing which will monitor security compliances to which all telecom operators in India have to comply by. The first rollout of these compliances will be setup as early as early 2009. Whether you are a private or a public operator you would need to pass these security tests to operate in India. This recommendation closely resembles the Chinese model where operators/equipment vendors have to adhere to strict norms. China’s Information Technology Certification Centre enforces these norms.

The government can say this is to prevent “all” hardware/network vendors from accessing their systems through back door channels. But the bottom-line is, it is to prevent the Chinese vendors from doing this. They are not concerned about Alcatels or Cisco’s of the world. They are more worried about the Huaweis of the world which has the Chinese government’s backing. China, a rising power, has a lot of countries nervous  ( including India) and they believe China might use the back-door channels to cripple Communications in case of conflict. The release says

DoT is concerned about the advent of ‘new names’ in the equipment vendor space which are of ‘suspect origin’, but extremely competitive in cost with regard to Telecom tenders.

This is specifically targetted at Huawei. What Huawei typically does is, off loads the network/communication gears to the Telecom provider for literally no cost and has an agreement that the Telecom provider can pay in say 10/20 years. This obviously has caught the attention of the Indian government and the security compliance is just a beginning. I foresee more stringent laws coming.

The compliance would include removing any inbuilt remote diagnostic facility in the equipment. This would be a major blow for Product companies that are planning to build NOCs ( Network Operating Centres) to monitor their products across locations. This  would increase the cost of support, since resources have to be ‘on-site’ throughout.

These extra tests and support would mean more money spent and it remains to be seen who is going to take the brunt. It is very unlikely that the equipment vendors are going to take the hit, and I say this because the equipments are already given to these Telecom vendors at throw away prices. I know of a case where one major networking giant had to give an eighty percent discount on its products to convince one major Telecom provider in India to buy it. So they will not bear the brunt. And we know the Telcos never take the hit ( Is it just me, or are they turning to be the next-gen Oil Companies?). So it might be the end consumer who might be forced to shell out more.

It needs to be seen how badly the consumer will be hit. On the brighter side though, if you are in the Telecom testing space, this is bonanza time 🙂 Interesting times ahead!!!

Solid Quarter for Cisco

Cisco has reported its fourth quarter earnings and it is good news all the way. Profit increased by 25% which also meant that they raised their forecast for 2008. That is an investor’s delight.

And I don’t know see their momentum decreasing anytime soon. Their data network business is booming and they are achieving phenomenol gains in the Unified Communication space. They seemed to be romping over the likes of Avaya and Juniper in this space and they just seem to be getting better with their key acquisitions and partnerships.

Good times for Cisco employees and share holders 🙂

A grin on Vivek’s Face

So why is Vivek of Unleash Networks grinning? Because he has got what most people in the Networking industry dream about. Having Cisco as a customer.

Great news buddy. Vivek has been keeping us informed about some of the stuff he has been upto these days and let me put it this way, you ain’t heard nothing yet!! This I believe is going to be the launching pad for better things and I soon hope to see Vivek ‘unleashing’ some great products.

If I were a VC, I would pick up the phone and be talking to Vivek right away 🙂