Archive for September, 2010

Benefits of Deploying Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network

September 30, 2010 @ 6:43 am

posted Tim Antioch

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Overview

The mass migration to IP telephony has delivered an initial wave of value to companies large and small. By consolidating voice, video, and data networks onto a single IP network, organizations have reduced the cost of communications, taken advantage of underused network capacity, and laid a foundation for unified communications.

Deploying unified communications across the business also delivers a second wave of value through enhanced communications and collaboration. These capabilities are helping organizations shorten decision cycles, accelerate business, and boost productivity by speeding secure access to information and by making it possible for everyone to collaborate everywhere. Unified communications also provides a communications system that can change and grow at a moment’s notice.

More than 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies now use Cisco^® Unified Communications to build competitive advantage. In fact, many of Cisco’s more than 50,000 unified communications customers are now enjoying a third wave of value created by embedding unified communications capabilities into business processes in order to streamline those processes and, in some cases, to change the way they do business.

Organizations will find that all these benefits can be fully realized only when Cisco Unified Communications is deployed on a Cisco Integrated Network. When unified communications are part of a comprehensive system that includes an integrated end-to-end infrastructure, organizations can successfully deliver a consistent set of unified communications services, not just to campus headquarters but to every place in the network.

The Unified Workspace

Unifying IP Communications and Collaboration Applications

Cisco Unified Communications creates a unified workspace by integrating IP communications and collaboration products and applications into a single, unified system. Without unified communications, disparate voice, video, data, and mobility applications cannot live up to their potential and are far less effective than they could be. The result is communications complexity, inefficiency, information overload, and misdirected communications. All of these challenges delay decisions, slow down processes, and reduce productivity across the enterprise.

Cisco Unified Communications helps companies contend with communications complexity. It also addresses the growing needs of increasingly mobile workers who now conduct business from their desks and in conference rooms, airports, warehouses, and vehicles. Cisco Unified Communications clears communications roadblocks by:

• Unifying voice, video, data, and mobility applications on both fixed and mobile networks: With rich call control, unified messaging, and unified client software, workers can take their workspace (and all its advanced capabilities) with them wherever they go.

• Enabling more effective communications: With presence and instant messaging, people can check the availability of colleagues, know how and where co-workers wish to be reached, and click-to-communicate in real time.

• Delivering media-rich collaboration: When voice, video, and web conferencing solutions use the power of the integrated network, people can collaborate instantly. They can also easily escalate sessions by adding video to an audio conversation or by adding web conferencing or whiteboarding to an existing audio or video conversation.

• Enabling the creation of business applications: With Cisco service creation platforms, customers and partners can develop innovative rich-media and web applications, making it possible to embed unified communications capabilities into existing business process systems.

The Power of an Integrated Network

An End-to-End System

Cisco provides an end-to-end unified communications system that uses the pervasive reach of an integrated network to enable the unified workspace. The secure network foundation includes industry-leading routers and switches that exhibit three types of intelligence:

• Device-aware: Because Cisco integrates intelligence throughout the network – even in the endpoints – a Cisco Integrated Network “knows” which device is being used, where it is being used, and what unified communications applications it is allowed to use.

• Application-aware: A Cisco Integrated Network actively participates with applications, automatically providing the appropriate rights, priorities, and organizational policies of each application.

• Network-aware: Cisco Unified Communications applications seek out the network services they require to help ensure that applications receive the appropriate quality of service (QoS).

When the network and applications interact this way, IT administrators and end users enjoy many benefits. Because the technologies are not bolted together, administrators can use capabilities across platforms, providing the flexibility to quickly and cost-efficiently deploy, operate, and consolidate new communication services. You can add features such as video or wireless voice through software upgrades and incremental hardware that builds upon existing network infrastructure. As a result, you have access to new business applications sooner, increasing their productivity and improving business processes.

Lower Total Cost of Ownership

In addition to these advanced capabilities, by implementing a Cisco Integrated Network (versus a network built with systems from multiple vendors) your organization can also enjoy a lower total cost of ownership (TCO):

• The networking costs per employee are, on average, almost 50 percent lower: According to a report by IDC (Operational Excellence in Networking: Industry Leaders Point the Way, IDC, April 2007), companies that consolidate router, switch, security, wireless, and voice vendors have, on average, a 45.6-percent lower cost per employee than those with six or more vendors.

• Each endpoint has a lower cost of ownership: According to a customer study conducted by Sage Research (Unified Communication Application: Uses and Benefits, Sage Research, 2006; http://www.cisco.com/en/US/solutions/collateral/ns340/ns394/ns165/net_implementation_white_paper0900aecd8040970b.pdf), organizations that use a single, primary network vendor have on average a 26-percent lower cost of ownership per endpoint than those that use multiple vendors.

• The overall network cost of ownership is substantially lower: Sage Research also found that organizations that use a single vendor for IP telephony have a 43-percent lower network cost of ownership than those that use multiple vendors. These savings are derived from all areas, including network deployment and maintenance, network performance improvements, and benefits for both IT and end users.

Cisco offers validated designs and industry best practices that are required in order for the network to deliver these benefits in deployment, operational manageability, and consolidation. These recommendations are based on the type of business site or its place in the enterprise network.

Recommendations for a Head Office or Campus

Typically, the primary users of business-critical and rich-media applications are the employees in the campus or head office. The campus infrastructure is built around a high-speed LAN switching network. A Cisco Integrated Network delivers the following unified communications benefits in the campus environment.

Faster, More Cost-Effective Deployments

In large companies, approximately 25 percent of personnel move each year. The Yankee Group estimates that it costs companies up to US$150 per move, add, or change. You can significantly minimize this enormous expense with Cisco Unified Communications products and Cisco Catalyst^® switching solutions in a Cisco Integrated Network:

• When a Cisco Unified IP Phone is plugged into a wall jack, the Cisco Catalyst switch automatically detects the phone and extracts the device information through either Link Layer Discovery Protocol-Media Endpoint Devices (LLDP-MED) or Cisco Discovery Protocol exchange.

• Then, using the Cisco Embedded Event Manager (EEM) feature in the Cisco Catalyst switch, you can automatically configure the switchport for voice. Cisco EEM is a powerful and flexible automation technology. It reduces deployment costs by allowing administrators to set policies that control the actions that a switch should dynamically take when specific events occur.

• For administrators who use Cisco Network Assistant, Cisco offers an alternate method for configuring switches for voice. When a Cisco Unified IP Phone is plugged in, the Smartports Advisor feature on the Cisco Catalyst switch can automatically send a dialogue box prompt to the Cisco Network Assistant management interface. The administrator can then apply the appropriate Smartports Advisor voice macros to that switchport for easy configuration.

• If you need to move to a new location, you simply unplug your phone and plug it into the wall jacks in your new office. Removing the voice configuration on the previous switchport helps to strengthen security. You can remove the configuration dynamically when the phone is unplugged.

Other vendors that partner with infrastructure vendors or offer only voice components lack this type of integration. As a result, each time an IP phone is moved or added to the network, IT personnel must manually reconfigure the switchports, significantly increasing administrative and support costs, especially in large enterprises with tens of thousands of IP phones.

Nonstop Communications over the LAN

IP-based voice networks must deliver the same continuously available service that was provided with traditional time-division multiplexing (TDM) voice networks. High availability starts with a hierarchical network design (Figure 1) that allows for separation of core, distribution, and access layers as well as the fault domains within these layers.

Cisco recommends the following guidelines for building access, distribution, and core layers in the campus.

• Maintain triangle topologies for Layer 3 routing peers, especially between the core and distribution switches: This topology helps ensure that a switch can take two equal paths to get to a destination. These two paths will simultaneously reside in the routing table. If a link failure occurs, the traffic will flow on the other path without requiring a route recalculation.

• Summarize routes from the distribution to the core: This process prevents the core switches from having to respond to routing advertisements coming from the access and distribution layers.

• Deploy switches with high-availability innovations: Cisco Catalyst 6500, Catalyst 4500, and Catalyst 3750-E switches lead the industry in meeting uptime requirements with advanced technology that contains, detects, and resolves faults faster with minimal effect on voice traffic. Features such as Stateful Switchover (SSO) preserve critical state information across dual supervisor engines to help ensure that unified communications traffic is continually switched if a primary supervisor engine fails. Cisco IOS^® Software Modularity allows you to upgrade single software modules without having to take the switch out of service, thereby increasing up-time even for planned upgrades. This feature localizes the effect of software process faults with a protected memory architecture. Even if a software process failure occurs, voice and video traffic can continue.

For more best practices for designing a multilayer network, refer to the Campus Network for High-Availability Design Guide at: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/netsol/ns656/networking_solutions_design_guidances_list.html.

Quality of Service

Unified communications requires new IP endpoints that deliver rich media to campus constituents. To ensure QoS, all forms of traffic – voice, video, and data – are assigned the appropriate class of service (CoS). CoS and Priority Queuing are controlled by Cisco Catalyst switches.

• Maintaining voice quality through the switch: The CoS value for unified communications voice traffic is controlled by the Cisco Catalyst switch. The switch indicates to the Cisco Unified IP Phone which voice VLAN ID it should use and then automatically applies the appropriate CoS value. The switch can also indicate CoS for traffic coming from devices attached to the phone using the Extended Trust feature. A CoS value of 5 indicates high priority and is usually reserved for voice. Call signaling is given a value of 3, and best-effort traffic is given a value of 0. So even if a rogue PC tries to raise its CoS value to 5, the Cisco Unified IP Phone resets the CoS value on the incoming packets of that PC to the CoS value indicated by the switch.

• Monitoring traffic to ensure QoS: Voice traffic is typically assigned the highest-priority queue. You can set an EEM script on a Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch to detect excessive packet drops and automatically alert the network administrator. Additional voice traffic monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities are provided through the network analysis module (NAM), a data, voice, and video traffic-analysis blade. For example, if dial tone or call setup latency exceeds specified thresholds, the NAM detects these anomalies, analyzes Cisco Unified Communications Manager response times, and then sends an alert to a network operator. For H.323, Media Gateway Control Protocol (MGCP), Skinny Client Control Protocol (SCCP), and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) traffic, the NAM monitors active calls between caller and callee pairs and identifies call quality degradation by reporting packet loss and jitter statistics. The NAM also performs Differentiated Services (DiffServ) QoS monitoring and provides traffic usage information for each DiffServ code point, helping validate QoS planning assumptions and detect unauthorized or incorrectly marked traffic that could adversely affect voice QoS.

Operational Manageability

Most networking surveys show that operational costs far outweigh the initial purchase cost of the equipment. Cisco is constantly improving the ways to deploy and manage unified communications on an end-to-end Cisco infrastructure. The following technologies help our customers optimize and efficiently operate this integrated network:

• Smartports macros: Based on Cisco best practices, Smartports macros can be applied to any Cisco Catalyst switch to make port configuration much simpler and more accurate. With a standard or customized Cisco Smartports macro, an administrator no longer has to log into each switchport and configure all the parameters for voice VLANs, port security, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) snooping, and Spanning Tree PortFast. Instead, the administrator automatically uploads the Smartports macros, which include all the proper settings. Cisco Smartports macros do not function in third-party or multivendor network environments. As you might imagine, the loss of this powerful cost-and-time-saving tool really accumulates when it comes to the moves, adds, and changes that generate significant costs each year. Cisco Smartports make these configuration changes as easy as possible, providing a greater return on investment.

• AutoQoS macros: Cisco developed AutoQoS macros in response to customer demand for a faster way to deploy QoS configurations, which are traditionally deployed manually on hundreds or thousands of switch and router ports. This powerful feature of Cisco IOS Software automatically handles a range of tasks, including classifying applications, generating policies, configuring QoS, monitoring and reporting to test QoS effectiveness, and enforcing service-level consistency. After Cisco AutoQoS evaluates a network environment and determines policy, it configures the port on an access switch to prioritize voice traffic – with only one command. And it still offers the flexibility to adjust and tailor QoS settings to customer-specific requirements. It also automatically monitors QoS settings and makes this information available in reports, with notification of abnormal events.

• Cisco IOS IP service-level agreements (SLAs): This tool actively monitors the health of the underlying network by generating and then analyzing traffic between multiple network locations or across multiple network paths. It uses the timestamp information to calculate performance metrics such as jitter, latency, network and server response times, packet loss, and mean-opinion-score (MOS) voice-quality scores. Administrators can schedule a Cisco IOS IP SLAs operation at any point in time or continuously over any time interval. Cisco IOS IP SLAs is configured to monitor per-class traffic over the same link by setting the DiffServ code point (DSCP) bits. Administrators can specify measurement characteristics including packet size, packet spacing, protocol type, DSCP marking, and other parameters. They can use measurement statistics provided by Cisco IOS IP SLAs operations for troubleshooting, problem analysis, and designing network topologies (Figure 2).

• Cisco IOS IP SLAs Responder: This component is embedded in the destination Cisco routing device. It processes measurement statistics and sends detailed timestamp information about the processing delay of the destination router back to the source Cisco router. Cisco recommends that round-trip delay be less than 150 ms and jitter be less than 30 ms for successful transmission of voice traffic. Unidirection measurements are also possible.

Secure Communications

The increasing number of applications and devices available on the network introduces many new points of vulnerability. As a result, you can no longer deploy security as a mix of “point-product” solutions. Instead, network security must be pervasive, securing everything from endpoints such as IP phones and PCs to the software and devices in the network infrastructure itself. Unlike some vendors, which focus only on securing the voice components or the infrastructure itself, Cisco takes a systems-level approach that integrates security throughout the network. This integration includes features and capabilities in the transport network, the endpoints, the call-processing infrastructure, and the applications.

When you deploy Cisco Unified Communications applications on a Cisco Integrated Network, you do not have to implement separate security devices. Cisco integrates critical security components deep into the network. Cisco is the only vendor that provides this in-depth security control, delivering the following security components:

• Secure connectivity: Cisco offers many options that help ensure secure communications. For example, VLAN segmentation keeps voice traffic on separate virtual network segments. Voice and Video Enabled VPN (V3PN) provides secure remote connectivity. WLANs are protected through Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA) and WPA2. Call management and endpoints offer strong voice media encryption using the Secure Real-Time Transport Protocol (SRTP), and Transport Layer Security (TLS) provides protection for signaling traffic. At the application layer, Cisco uses HTTPS to permit protected remote management of IP communications applications. And the Cisco Unity^® system is the first voice messaging system to offer encrypted messaging.

• Trust and identity: To contextually identify users and establish trust, many standards-based authentication mechanisms must work together. Cisco offers support for traditional authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) services in the infrastructure, as well as more advanced capabilities elsewhere with such tools as Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) and digital certificates. Wireless LANs (WLANs) can allow IP phones to transparently connect on ports where user authentication with 802.1x is mandated. By deploying Cisco Network Admission Control (NAC) framework, customers can restrict non-security-compliant wired and wireless endpoints that may be vulnerable or infected with worms, viruses, or spyware. All these threats are stopped before they can enter the network and potentially disrupt voice services.

• Threat defense: Cisco uses many techniques to provide protection against aggressive threats. Integrated and standalone firewalls and intrusion detection systems protect the infrastructure, the voice VLANs, and WLANs. A hardened OS and integrated host intrusion prevention solution called Cisco Security Agent protects the call-processing components. To protect endpoints against common Layer 2 exploits such as man-in-the-middle attacks, Cisco employs advanced dynamic Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) inspection protection and other tools on its LAN switches and unified IP phones. In addition, the Cisco Unified Communications applications themselves offer security features. For example, Cisco Unified Communications Manager can support multiple levels of administration access and advanced protection against toll fraud. Finally, the Cisco Integrated Network infrastructure is designed to withstand denial-of-service (DoS) attacks so that data and voice traffic continues to be forwarded even when DoS attacks occur. Cisco Catalyst 6500 and Catalyst 4500 switches provide such protection through CPU rate limiters as well as control plane policing (CoPP), which is embedded in the hardware.

Scalable Wireless Services

Businesses today use wireless networking to give employees access to the business applications and communication tools they need even when they are on the move. By adding voice-over-IP (VoIP) capability to wireless networks, organizations can improve collaboration and responsiveness while realizing cost savings. The combination of Cisco Unified Communications and the Cisco Unified Wireless Network lets organizations provide IP communications for mobile workers while minimizing TCO.

Cisco integrates important technologies into its switching, routing, and wireless offerings to provide optimal support for wireless voice, simplified wireless voice deployment and management, wireless voice call roaming, diverse wireless voice client support, and high-quality wireless voice communications. These technologies include:

• Simplified wireless voice deployment and management: Cisco integrates wireless controller functions into its switches and routers so network managers can scale and manage wireless networks as easily as they scale and manage traditional wired networks. For example, the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series/7600 Series Wireless Services Module (WiSM) supports zero-touch deployments that require no preconfiguration of access points. It also supports QoS policies, mobility groups, and back-end services, as well as other important tools such as template-based configuration management, which allows quick application of systemwide wireless security configurations.

When deployed with the Cisco Wireless Control System (WCS), the Cisco Catalyst 6500 WiSM supports enhanced monitoring and troubleshooting features such as intuitive heat-map displays, alarm filtering, event correlation, and granular reporting tools. This Cisco Catalyst module also supports the simultaneous tracking of 10,000+ wireless client devices from directly within the WLAN infrastructure when deployed with the Cisco Wireless Location Appliance.

The Cisco Catalyst 6500 WiSM facilitates maximum access point coverage – 300 lightweight access points per module and clustering of up to 3600 lightweight access points per roaming domain. For remote-site deployments, Cisco also offers the Cisco Catalyst 3750G-24WS Switch, which can manage up to 50 lightweight access points and the Cisco Wireless LAN Controller Module (WLCM) for Cisco integrated services routers, which can manage up to six lightweight access points. Standalone WLAN controllers such as the Cisco 4400 and 2100 Series Wireless LAN Controllers are also available.

• Wireless voice call roaming: Efficient roaming is critical for voice applications, which are unforgiving of any delays in authentication. The Cisco Catalyst 6500 WiSM, the Cisco Catalyst 3750G-24WS, and the WLCM offer fast, secure roaming that facilitates roaming of voice clients between access points in the same subnet (Layer 2 roaming) or between subnets (Layer 3 roaming) without disruption to voice calls.

• Integration with diverse wireless clients: A growing number of client devices support 802.11 wireless voice communications today, including dual-mode cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), laptop softphones, and Wi-Fi handsets such as the Cisco Unified Wireless IP Phone 7920. Cisco Compatible Extensions, a licensing program for wireless clients, facilitates secure interoperation of these devices with the Cisco Unified Wireless Network. It also helps enable interoperability of client-side features such as power-save mode, QoS, and assisted roaming. Wireless clients that support Cisco Compatible Extensions undergo extensive testing at an independent third-party test lab to help ensure support for innovative Cisco features, as well as interoperability with the Cisco WLAN infrastructure.

High-quality video over wireless: High-speed wireless access points that support the 802.11n standard can deliver 248 Mbps of data. This level represents a significant increase over the 54 Mbps delivered by 802.11g devices, and optimizes the delivery of voice and video. These new access points have higher power requirements, and Cisco Catalyst switches offer 20 watts of enhanced Power over Ethernet (PoE) per port to support 802.11n access points without requiring additional wiring or power outlets. In addition, Cisco wireless access points, client devices, and Cisco Compatible Extensions devices include support for Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM.) WMM is a component of the IEEE 802.11e WLAN standard that supports priority tagging and queuing to ensure integrated handling of voice communications. Through the use of Layer 2 admission control, QoS can be maintained under heavy user loads to meet demanding wireless networking needs.

Video as a Simple Addition

When Cisco Unified Communications is deployed on a Cisco Integrated Network, adding video to the network is as easy as adding any other application because the applications and the infrastructure are part of an intelligent system. This intelligence extends out to all types of devices (for example, laptops, PDAs, mobile phones, or remote PCs). If a device is video-enabled, the required settings are generated automatically and the appropriate switches are instructed to provide the proper VLAN and QoS to allow the video stream. Without intelligence distributed throughout the network, video cannot be integrated as easily, proper settings require more manual effort, and manageability is compromised.

With an integrated network, organizations can:

• Enable video endpoints: You can introduce traditional video conferencing equipment based on the H.323 video conferencing onto the converged network, and you can enable these systems to automatically register to Cisco Unified Communications Manager. Thereafter you can easily control them with Cisco Unified Communications Manager.

• Optimize video delivery: IP Multicast is a bandwidth-conserving technology that reduces traffic by simultaneously delivering a single stream of information to multiple recipients. This technology is ideal for video applications where the same large set of data or video must be transmitted efficiently to multiple clients.

• Dramatically simplify video conferencing management: Call detail records (CDRs) are also integrated into and managed by Cisco Unified Communications Manager. IT managers no longer must download CDRs from two separate systems. Instead, all phone and video records are located in one place.

Energy Savings

Cisco Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network can help reduce your company’s carbon footprint and conserve energy with a switching infrastructure that provides additional levels of power control within each Cisco Catalyst switchport. Cisco Integrated Power Management (IPM) provides customers with significant power-consumption savings on devices (for example, IP phones, wireless access points, and IP video surveillance cameras) that use Cisco Discovery Protocol to negotiate power. Whereas the IEEE standard specifies that 802.3af power should be provisioned in large increments of wattage such as 7 or 15 watts of power to each device regardless of power need, the Cisco IPM allows administrators to provision power based on the power the device actually needs. For example, some Class 3 devices need only 10W instead of the default 15.4W value indicated in the 802.3af standard. This power optimization, combined with the scalable power supplies offered on modular Cisco Catalyst switches, helps customers:

• Maximize PoE port density

• Minimize the number of switches required

• Expand savings through decreased use of electricity, backup UPS, and battery power systems

Voice and Data Teams Share a Common View of the Network

In most enterprises, separate teams manage the voice system and the data infrastructure, reflecting the traditional separation of the voice and data networks. But with unified communications, problems can span both realms, so it is essential that both teams can communicate specific details about problems with one another. Cisco Unified Operations Manager provides a consolidated view of the entire Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure and presents the current operational status of each element. Cisco Unified Operations Manager can:

• Query Cisco Catalyst switches to ascertain the operational status of the switch as well as the system resources and different ports and interfaces

• Alert administrators in case of operational faults

• Track IP phone inventory and IP phone status changes

• Create a variety of reports that document all the moves, adds, and changes of IP phones

• Increase productivity and enable faster trouble isolation by providing contextual diagnostic tools that troubleshoot through diagnostic tests, performance, and connectivity details about different elements of the Cisco Unified Communications infrastructure

Cisco Unified Operations Manager also provides deep visibility into voice packets. This visibility is essential because malfunctions in any voice-processing components – in the LAN or WAN connections or in the infrastructure itself – can affect voice quality. When the Cisco network infrastructure and management tools detect excessive voice packet loss, jitter, or latency, they can alert network administrators and allow them to centrally troubleshoot real-time voice traffic in targeted areas without having to go on site. And because Cisco management software can provide a common view of the network for voice and data teams, these teams can communicate concerns with much greater precision and quickly identify and resolve problems. Here’s how Cisco provides this rapid detection and notification of voice anomalies:

• When an administrator is alerted to a voice problem by a switch, the administrator can instruct the switch to mirror the real-time voice traffic so it can be analyzed.

• The Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analyzer (ERSPAN) on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 Switch mirrors the traffic across the campus and across Layer 3 boundaries to a central site, where it can be analyzed.

• The NAM analyzes the traffic, eliminating the need for the administrator to go on site with a portable troubleshooting tool to solve the problem.

Recommendations for a Branch Office

The Cisco Integrated Network delivers a powerful unified communications experience for campus workers. And now, thanks to the innovative Cisco system approach, companies can consistently and reliably extend this experience to branch-office locations. Branch-office workers are very sensitive to application performance and availability, so the network needs powerful WAN optimization tools and built-in redundancy in case the main connection to the campus is disconnected.

Providing Optimum Voice Quality Across the WAN

According to The Nemertes Research Group, Inc., 90 percent of employees now work in branch offices, and the number of branch offices is growing at the rate of 10 percent a year. As the number of branch offices increases and the new unified communications services at these remote locations continue to evolve, the requirements for the WAN infrastructure are changing.

The Cisco system approach helps ensure optimum voice quality across the WAN in several ways:

• Network-aware Call Admission Control (CAC): Cisco integrated services routers not only support standards-based QoS, they also exchange information with Cisco Unified Communications Manager to enable network-aware CAC with QoS. CAC allows the network to accept or reject a call based on bandwidth and policy considerations. A primary enabler to this solution is the Cisco IOS Software feature called Cisco RSVP Agent. It facilitates dynamic adjustment to changes in the network, supports complex network topologies, and helps enable unified data, voice, and video network designs.

• Resource Reservation Protocol (RSVP): This IETF standards-based signaling protocol secures and reserves bandwidth across the WAN for calls accepted by Cisco RSVP Agent (Figure 3). The resulting user experience is characterized by superior QoS and reliability for calls amid meshed and multitiered networks. Cisco RSVP Agent is supported on the Cisco 2800 and Cisco 3800 Series Integrated Services Routers.

• Low Latency Queuing (LLQ) on the WAN interfaces: This technology gives voice traffic a higher priority over other forms of traffic on the link.

• Traffic shaping: Traffic shaping prevents WAN traffic from reaching the line rate in case of speed mismatches with the central hub. It is also used to stay within the committed information rate delivered by the service provider.

• Link fragmentation and interleaving (LFI): This technology is very helpful when WAN links are less than 768 kbps. LFI takes large packets destined for the WAN and cuts them into manageable pieces for transmission. It allows voice packets to be interleaved within these pieces and transmitted across the WAN. Without LFI, voice packets would have to wait until the entire large packet was transmitted across the WAN before they would be allowed on the link. This delay, of course, could affect the quality of the voice connection.

• WAN optimization: Service modules on Cisco integrated services routers support a variety of technologies that optimize WAN transport. For example, the Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) Network Module minimizes protocol chatter as it traverses the WAN link, conserving bandwidth for business-critical applications. The Cisco Network Capacity Expansion (NCE) services module can focus on bandwidth optimization through compression, and the Performance Routing services module is a Cisco routing innovation that determines optimized routing paths for different types of applications.

Delivering Resiliency for Intrabranch Communications

Cisco StackWise^® Plus technology on the Cisco Catalyst 3750-E and Cisco EtherSwitch Service Modules, such as the 24-Port EtherSwitch Service Module for the Cisco 2600/2800/3700/3800 Series Routers, creates a unified logical switching architecture that delivers a high level of resiliency for voice-enabled wiring closets. The switching stack behaves as a single switching unit that is managed by a master switch. Any member switch can take over for the master switch if a master switch fails. Although the switchover times between the master and member switches may not be at the level of modular switching platforms with SSO, recovery has proven to be acceptable for customers whose data and voice availability requirements are less demanding.

Nonstop Communications over the WAN

Most branch offices, depending on the number of users, operate well with anything from a few Ethernet ports on a Cisco integrated services router to a full Cisco Catalyst 3750-E stackable switching system using Cisco StackWise Plus technology. If WAN resiliency is a concern, network administrators should start with two diverse WAN paths on the same router or different routers for added redundancy. In the latter configuration, features such as Hot-Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) with tracking come into play so that outgoing traffic will always go through the correct router. Performance Routing can help circumvent brownouts and optimize routes based on MOS, latency, jitter etc., because it looks at best-metric routing instead of best-path routing, increasing application resiliency.

Deploying unified communications in the branch office also requires its own redundancy solution. A Cisco Integrated Network provides this redundancy with Cisco Unified Survivable Remote Site Telephony (SRST), an industry-first resiliency capability for remote sites. This innovative capability is embedded in the Cisco IOS Software, which runs on Cisco integrated services and multiservice access routers.

In a centralized call-processing model, the Cisco Unified SRST-enabled router facilitates automatic failover. In this way, local calls and active calls from Cisco Unified IP Phones to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are maintained even if a WAN failure occurs (Figure 4). Here’s how:

• If the WAN link to a remote office fails and the connection to the Cisco Unified Communications Manager for the domain is lost, the phones in that branch office automatically redirect to the Cisco Unified SRST-enabled router.

• The Cisco Unified SRST-enabled router automatically takes over and offers a rich set of telephony functions to help ensure business continuity with minimal effect on the system.

• When the disrupted WAN link is restored, the phones automatically reregister with the original Cisco Unified Communications Manager and, again, no manual intervention is required.

And Cisco Unified SRST accomplishes this reregistration with no additional hardware components, and no manual intervention is required (Figure 4).

Simplifying Services Integration

For enterprise branch offices and small businesses where onsite telecom and IT expertise is scarce, integrated services are particularly critical. Cisco is the first and only vendor to offer a fully integrated solution that meets the unique needs of small businesses and enterprise branch offices. The telephony system, IP private branch exchange (PBX), voice messaging, data routing, switching, and security requirements are all integrated into a single unified communications platform that operates as a holistic system.

According to industry consultant Current Analysis, this convergence of routing protocols, security services, and voice applications in this platform helps “ensure the integrity and security of both the branch-office network and the central office that the branch is connected to”. In essence, the integrated services router becomes a secure, all-in-one converged communications hub.

Cisco integrated services routers are uniquely suited to provide advanced security features with the IP PBX and voice gateway features. As many as 240 users can be supported with Cisco Unified Communications Manager Express, and 720 users with Cisco Unified SRST.

Without this systems approach to small- and branch-office unified communications, customers would instead be forced to deploy multiple devices, integrate their own solutions, and spend more time overall on configuration and troubleshooting. And at the same time they would be more vulnerable to security breaches and QoS problems.

Award-Winning Services and Support

Companies that have deployed Cisco Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network also enjoy significant benefits from using Cisco as their primary vendor for lifecycle services and support. Cisco provides expert services that protect, optimize, and grow network platforms. Cisco and our partners provide a full range of lifecycle services and support that include:

• Comprehensive planning, design, implementation, and optimization services to help ensure a smooth and efficient migration to unified communications

• End-to-end integrated and validated solutions and systems that are easier to order, install, manage, upgrade, and use

• In-depth training, certification, and expertise delivered by Cisco and our worldwide partners

• Twenty-four-hour technical assistance and comprehensive service and support for the complete solution

Cisco and our partners have a proven record of high customer satisfaction and industry recognition of leadership for services and support. With a fully integrated unified communications solution from Cisco, in which the IP phones, access points, switches, routers, and other network components are from Cisco, customers can enjoy the following benefits:

• They can have one point of contact to receive speedy implementation and problem resolution.

• They can be among the first to deploy new features as they are developed. They will do so knowing that the unified communications solution and the integrated network will be completely compatible.

Summary

The benefits of deploying Cisco Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network can positively affect an organization’s revenue and profitability, providing competitive advantage for those customers that choose Cisco as their unified communications partner.

• When a high-tech Fortune 500 company replaced its old TDM voice technology with VoIP at 75 percent of its sites, it saved more than US$35 million in voice operating expenses over a span of 30 months. The company estimates its unified communications savings from employee productivity to be $220 to $280 million. This large enterprise was also able to integrate 30 acquisitions in 3 years with no increase in IT voice staff.

• By deploying unified communications across the business, a U.S. government agency exponentially increased its unified communications benefits. The agency expects to reduce annual travel costs by US$10 million and has already reduced voice conferencing costs by 50 percent while increasing monthly usage from 400,000 minutes to 2.5 million minutes in the first year.

• A high-end Japanese retailer used the embedded unified communications capabilities in its inventory application to optimize the customer experience in one of its biggest profit centers. The result? In the 6 months that the company piloted its radio frequency identification (RFID)-enabled in-store inventory application, it increased revenue growth by 113 percent over the previous year. At the same time, the company reduced its sales cycle time by 20 percent while dramatically improving customer satisfaction.

Ultimately, Cisco’s extensive experience with unified communications and IP networks means that customers can be confident they have a strong ally in their efforts to implement a successful, secure, and powerful unified communications solution.

For more information, contact Jim Barker, President of Unified360: jbarker@unified360.com, a Cisco partner or visit http://www.cisco.com/go/unified .

Tags: business organizations, collaboration applications, collaboration products, communications capabilities, communications system, comprehensive system, data networks, enhanced communications, fortune 500 companies, initial wave, integrated network, ip communications, mass migration, mobility applications, network organizations, second wave, third wave, unified communications services, unified workspace, video data

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Face-Off: Zuckerberg Versus the ACLU [Updated]

September 29, 2010 @ 6:10 am

posted Tim Antioch

Today Facebook unveiled Places

BY Austin CarrToday

…… its new “check in” feature designed to take on geo-location services such as Gowalla and Foursquare. Within hours of the announcement, the ACLU responded with a list of criticisms, chastising the social network for its lack of adequate privacy measures. Essentially, the ACLU charged Facebook with not giving users “full control” over the service.

Now Facebook has responded. Below is an open letter on the issue we just received from Facebook’s director of policy communications, Barry Schnitt, who says that all of these points were delivered to the ACLU before they published their warning.

In the statement, Facebook attempts to show just how much control users actually have over Places. The social network carefully explains the measures it has taken, contending that it’s offered explicit and accessible options to customize how much information is shared.

Facebook also calls the ACLU “misinformed” and says it ignores the lengths the company has gone through to ensure privacy.

UPDATE: The squabble continues. The ACLU just posted another response to Facebook. The organization says it appreciates the privacy options currently available to Places users, but recommend three “straightforward steps” to provide further safeguards:

1. Limiting the default visibility of check-ins on your feed to “Friends Only.”
2. Allowing you to customize your check-in privacy.
3. Providing notice to you each time you are checked in by a friend.

So the back and forth continues, centered mainly on what default options are appropriate to a user’s privacy. The ACLU persists in its initial claim that “no” is not an option in Facebook: “If your friend tries to check-in for you, you have two choices: ‘Allow Check-Ins’ and ‘Not Now.’ Until you hit ‘Allow Check-Ins,’ you cannot be checked into a Place by a friend. But you are not given an option, like ‘No’ or ‘Don’t Allow,’ that would opt you out of Places. Instead, all you can do immediately is hit ‘Not Now,’ which just means ‘ask me again later.’”

Come on, Facebook, no means no!

Check out Facebook’s original response to the ACLU’s stance below:

Facebook Places sets a new standard for user control and privacy protection for location information. We’re disappointed that ACLU’s Northern California office ignores this and seems to generally misunderstand how the service works.

Specifically, no location information is associated with a person unless he or she explicitly chooses to become part of location sharing. No one can be checked in to a location without their explicit permission. Many third parties have applauded our controls, indicating that people have more protections using Facebook Places than other widely used location services available today …

Assertion: Facebook is rolling out “here now,” privacy later.
The facts: The current settings already enable you to easily make yourself visible to only a specific group of people on a Place page. All you need to do is turn off “Here Now” and set your “Places I check-in” control to the appropriate setting for the visibility you want. They are demanding that you, instead, customize two settings to get the same result. While we appreciate their feedback, they are just wrong that more complexity is better here …

Finally, it’s important to note that Here Now is not enabled if you’ve set your master privacy control to Friends of Friends or Friends or if you’ve customized your settings to be restrictive.

Assertion: Places data is on the move.
The facts: For those who choose to share their location, we offer additional controls that restrict the ability of applications to get information about their location. Applications you use must request and receive access through a clearly labeled and simple permissions dialog before accessing your check-ins.

Your friends can share your check-ins with applications and we feel there is the potential here to make really compelling social experiences. However, all you need to do is uncheck a box in your privacy settings under “Applications and Websites” to prevent this info from being shared by your friends. And, if you’ve already gone in and unchecked the other boxes, the Places I check-in box will be unchecked for you by default.

Assertion: In the world of Facebook Places, “no” is unfortunately not an option.
The facts: Again, this is misinformed. Every person on Facebook must agree before they check in or can be checked in to a place. Before you have agreed and someone tries to tag you, you are not associated with any location.

In addition, the story your friend tagged you in does not show up on your profile until you have agreed to allow it. Also, the message that lets you know a friend would like to check you in includes a link to Learn More, which explains how to stop getting these messages.

Finally, ACLU NC ignores the many protections built into the system—only confirmed friends can try to check you in, to tag you a friend must also check themselves in, you are notified every time someone tries to check you in, and you can easily remove any tag.

http://www.fastcompany.com/user/austin-carr

www.fastcompany.com

Tags: aclu, adequate privacy, attempts, control users, default options, facebook, initial claim, ins, location services, misinformed, privacy options, safeguards, schnitt, squabble, straightforward steps, two choices, visibility

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A Guide To Creating The Perfect Social Media Campaign

@ 6:07 am

posted Tim Antioch

The Many Different Forms of Social Media

by FoundUB4

Social media can take many different forms, including Internet forums, weblogs, wikis, podcasts, pictures and video. Technologies include: blogs, picture-sharing, vlogs, wall-postings, email, instant messaging, music-sharing, crowdsourcing (crowd outsourcing), and voice over IP, to name a few.

Examples of social media applications are Google Groups (reference, social networking), Wikipedia (reference), MySpace (social networking), Facebook (social networking), Youmeo (social network aggregation), Last.fm (personal music), YouTube (social networking and video sharing), Second Life (virtual reality), Flickr (photo sharing), Twitter (social networking and microblogging) and other microblogs such as Jaiku and Pownce.

What is Social Media Marketing (SMM)?

SMM is where you use social media networking and user-generated content platforms to promote a product, service or content. SMM typically involves creating and participating in a “conversation” with the target audience, rather than blatantly advertising to them.

SMM can also include creating and promoting viral content that is meant to be shared by users. Many marketers are not comfortable with the lack of control over social media but when approached properly, social networks can be extremely effective channels for building product evangelism, reputation management or corporate branding

Why is it becoming so popular?

I believe it’s simply because it mirrors our true nature. We are gregarious by nature and for once we are able to use technology easily to reach out and connect in new and exciting ways. It’s still all so new too, there are new frontiers popping up regularly and it’s a bit like the early Internet “gold rush” days during the 90′s

Is every Social Media site for every entrepreneur?

They might not think so, but it is. You do it naturally every day, SM online is simply the same thing applied technologically.

How does a business owner determine which site is the best match for them?

Good question. Not all SM Sites are equal. I typically advise people to think “classical marketing” and don’t let the ‘flashing lights’ fool you. Visit the site, pat attention to the conversation. “Lurk” for a while. Ask a question, see what happens. Each environment has its own rules. Blunder in and start shouting and you’ll get flamed. Respect the environments ‘sub culture’ and you’ll do fine. An obvious example of this in action is a site that caters to “gamers” – you instinctively know that if you’re selling insurance you would have a tough time in that environment. Like I said, think like a classical marketer.

Are there some “best practices” steps to starting and maintaining your SMM sites? And how do I make social networking work for me?

Social Media Marketing

Many a company has forgotten the old maxim, “Act in haste, repent at your leisure…” The same warning should be applied to companies rushing to get in on the social media marketing wave.

If you hear things at work like “We should have a blog,” or “Let’s join Facebook,” I suggest [respectfully] that maybe you are about to make a whopper of a mistake.

Here’s why…

Backwards is bad

You are starting your social media strategy design backwards – and this will lead to trouble.

In any other business endeavor we start by figuring out what we want to accomplish. Social media technologies are not magical. They’re just tools too. It’s time to stop doing social media marketing because it’s trendy and instead do it because it works!

4 Things to Remember

(1) The web is about people. You need to know your audience. Understand their capabilities, their hangouts online, their language and behaviors. If you’re targeting business travelers then consider rating and review sites for example. Just don’t guess…

(2) Figure out what will be different when you are done. This is the “why” behind your plans. Do you want to create a close knit community or a product testing ground. Understand the motive’s behind your actions.

(3) What outcomes and objectives are you seeking to achieve. Consider the end result and how you will measure it. A fuzzy or fluffy end result is almost as bad as not specifying one at all. How will you measure success?

(4) What technology to choose. Only answer this question when you’ve completed the others because then you’ll know with clarity and confidence.

In conclusion, if you recognize classic business planning and management principles amongst these notes you’d be correct. The game may have changed, but the rules are still the same. Plan first, then act with confidence.

How long is this new type of marketing going to take to master?

The actual skills are quite simple – you likely already have them mastered. What you need to learn is the PROCESS. That takes a little time, but frankly not that much.

What if I don’t know many people to invite to my network?

No problem. Answer this question “If you are the ANSWER, what was the QUESTION?” Armed with that answer you can locate groups of people who would need what you offer. You can then invite them to participate and you can SHARE your knowledge and expertise to PROVE you are the answer to their problem. Use your favourite search engine to locate these people – simply type in the QUESTION or problem. Remember, if people knew the answer they wouldn’t be looking

How can I get business through SMM?

It’s a funny thing when I’m asked this. We do it daily, so I marvel at the fact people think it’s different online. Sure there’s a layer of technology in the mix, but it’s still about people getting to know people. Remember the old maxim, people buy from people they like and trust.

SMM simply enables (or should I say empowers) you to do this more effectively.

Why Most Brands Fail on Social Networks

A new report from JupiterResearch sheds light on what many online marketers suspected for quite some time. Most brands are failing to make impact on social networks…

Naughton’s Law states: “We invariably over-estimate the short-term implications of new communications technologies, and we grievously underestimate their long term impacts.” Every brand should be online in the best way, know its consumers, and maximize the benefit of its online offering to those consumers.

Here are some startling facts from the report:

Startling Facts:

(*) The average branded social networking page has only 6,494 friends.
(*) Many advertisers are still building branded social networking pages that broadcast content rather than inviting users to interact.
(*) “Most advertisers simply don’t know how to market properly within social networks.” – JupiterResearch

- New Research Suggests:

(*) You should promote your SM pages with paid adverts rather than relying on viral marketing to get the message out. Building viral buzz is harder than you think.
(*) You need to engage users on the page. Even simple forms of engagement, such as contests, on average doubled the number of friends acquired by each branded page.
(*) You must also appeal to social networkers’ love of multimedia to get noticed. Social Networkers are twice as likely to visit a branded page focused on media content than a branded page focused on products.

How does the non-writer do this type of marketing?

It really shouldn’t pose a problem. The ‘Net is vast and there’s room for each of us to be AUTHENTIC. Even behind the shield of a computer many of us seem able to sense a scoundrel or someone “putting on airs”.

If you can email you can do SM. If you can talk you can SM. If you have a pulse… you get the idea.

Do the Social Media Marketing sites have fees to pay?

Typically NO. I advise you to initially avoid any sites that ask for payment until you know precisely what you are paying for. There are some good fee based sites out there, but the good ones also offer a free version too – start there if you wish. Let the results determine the level of investment you are prepared to make.

Are there some sites that you would recommend for business people?

LinkedIn.com
eCademy.com
SelfGrowth.com
Ning.com – ‘create your own’ Social Media website.

Will I have to spend hours a day keeping in touch with all of the people who write to me?

You will need to invest time and energy in your online marketing. Whether it’s YOU that does this or one of your staff is entirely up to you. But you cannot expect a “set and forget” solution to something that is inherently human.

How can I protect myself from “weirdoes?”

Be careful. Don’t give away sensitive or private information online. You will always be exposed to some degree to odd people. I get some very odd emails and propositions, however you need to remember this is business, and although you are using “personal skills” to network online, never forget that.

How can I come across as a professional on these sites, and is it possible to do “real” business this way?

Yes. Publish a professional PROFILE. Show you are a professional and act accordingly and you will be perceived as such. Include family photos of you dressed as a clown at your kids birthday party at your own peril. Remember, online your “goofs” are eternal and will haunt you forever. Online reputation is area you need to tread carefully within. It’s a bit off topic, but that’s why I tell teenagers that they should be very careful about the pictures and posts they put on these social websites. Because in a few years the recruiters will be Googling them and this will be part of their “resume” and frankly it can be a career killer before it even starts.

Why do some people seem to get good results and others just get discouraged?

As with all things in life some people quit too early. Social Media Marketing and Social Networking takes time. It’s like any relationship you develop with another human, rushing to the finish just gets you slapped… Metaphorically and literally too!

Also, success online isn’t about one big thing, it’s about a cluster of little things done consistently with focus and commitment. The strongest trees take the longest to grow. Online things happen a lot faster, but still there is a time commitment, think 6 to 12 months and you’ll be thinking along the right lines.

Is there a “fast start” strategy once I sign up for a Social media marketing site?

There is. Create a professional profile. Publish some content establishing you as an expert in your field. The ‘readers’ will approve and so will the search engines. Explore the active or “hot zones” within the SM site, pay attention to the type of communication and then dive in. Give first. Build kudos and credit before you try asking for anything.

To keep up, use technology to “feed” your SM presence from your other sites like your blog or website. I use technology to syndicate and publish my content to all my SM sites with the push of one button. It makes connecting and staying up to date a breeze.

Remember to invite your friends to join you. Add a promotional button on your “other” sites – for instance if you decide to join Twitter, you can put a “Follow Me” link on your website. Connect, Communicate and Commit. Now ‘rinse and repeat.’

Tags: Campaign, Creating, Guide, Media, Perfect, Social

FoundUB4 is a small, yet focused social media agency Barrie is a Social Media Specialist with experience in social media optimisation Extremely technical and passionate about search marketing in its entirety.

Tags: content platforms, corporate branding, google, google groups, internet forums, internet gold rush, media applications, media networking, new frontiers, personal music, pownce, reputation management, second life, social networking, social networks, target audience, video technologies, voice over ip, wikipedia

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Leaders: Is Your Sales Organization Visible, Accountable and Predictable?

September 10, 2010 @ 3:28 am

posted Tim Antioch

Sales Leaders: Is Your Sales Organization Visible, Accountable and Predictable?

By Rick Toma (My friend, Rick Toma, of Metricsboard has some great advice for sales leaders.)

Think about this a minute or two. You are a sales leader. The size of your organization does not matter. The product or the service you are selling, does not matter. Your competition does not really matter. Price or margins do not matter. This question focuses on sales behaviors, culture and communication.

There is an old expression. “What I don’t know won’t hurt me.” I, personally, hate this expression and look at it as an excuse and not a reason for why things are the way they are. Awareness is the cornerstone for action, results and ultimately, accountability. First, one must have that desire to “know” and accept that maybe, just maybe, he or she does not know everything.

In my years of working with and within sales organizations, I have just about seen the spectrum of what makes a good sales organization and what is missing in those that, let’s say, are not that good. Almost in all cases, I hear excuses and not reasons. And, when all the dialogue ends and the dust settles, it fundamentally comes down to the question, above. How visible is the sales effort that is so crucial for business success? Are your sales performers accountable for their degree of effort and the subsequent results? Can you rely on what you are being shown or told that translates into real and sustainable revenue?

Let’s examine these key 3 critical success components, individually.

Visibility: Visibility is the knowledge of what is going on in all phases or facets of the sales process. I don’t think that I know of any sales organization where there are not one or two (or more) sales people that hold back just a little on their prospect churn or soon to close clients. The reason? It’s the sales performer’s way of managing the boss’s expectations. They would rather delight than disappoint. That unanticipated win makes him or her heroes! And, should that boss be in bliss over the unexpected windfall? That answer should be categorically NO! That is just one example of visibility. Another example includes the maintaining and communication of a complete pipeline by individual performer. A pipeline report is not just the highest likelihood for close of the top prospects. It should include the good, the bad and the ugly. How else can one manage individual performance? And, it is not so bad an idea that those who are long in effort and short on results be known in larger circles than just with the boss. Visibility such as this leads to the next component…accountability. More on that a little latter. In summary, visibility requires standard processes, standard rules and standard measures/expectations for success. All must be thoroughly communicated and understood by all. No exceptions. And those who break or bend the rules risk adverse monetary actions or formal disciplinary action.
Accountability: How many times have you, as a sales leader, had an individual whose pipeline was always full to the max, had high probability to close projections and when month-end came around, there was nothing? These individuals are self proclaimed students of the art of sales, attend regular training and always are so busy and harried; you can’t corner them for even 10 minutes. These are people who think success is measured by activity and not necessarily by results. Most sales organizations have a smattering of these individuals and they are often, difficult to deal with. There is always an excuse(s) as to why those close projections did not materialize. But, there is always the next entry in the pipeline that will, for sure, close. As common as this is, there is simple explanation for the non-performance. This type of individual has not taken accountability for what that individual has taken on with the role in the first place. That being the closing of business and the generation of revenue. Period. Underlying reasons can vary from lack of communicated and understood goals, to too high of salaries, to lack of feedback or management complacency. The list can go on. However, attracting and retaining sales performers who know what is expected from him or her and signing up or owning up to that expectation is absolutely critical to sales success. They also know that not living up to that commitment means no job. As sales leaders it is incumbent upon each of us to thoroughly communicate and reinforce what is expected of each sales individual, the upsides, the downsides and the support they can expect in order to be successful. Frankly, a sales organization that is not 100% accountable is a sales organization that is doomed to live in one form or another of mediocrity, at best, and be an inexhaustible expense drain with little to show for it.
Predictable: How perfect a world this would be if every individual sales projection was 100% perfect 100% of the time! Unfortunately, that scenario just does not happen. However, just getting to a “reasonable” percentage for purposes of forecasting is a mega challenge, particularly in today’s economic times. What is a reasonable percentage of projected to actual close? I’ve seen as little as less than 10% and as high as 66%. The challenge is not so much the figure, but what you can rely upon from your sales organization. Of course, you want that figure to be as high as possible. Sales predictability can arguably be a product of the previous two discussions around visibility and accountability.

Given the instituting of process, structure and discipline combined with honest and ongoing communication, you are on the road to having that sales organization that is visible, accountable and predictable.

Now, here is the kicker. This road travels both directions. As you desire and ultimately expect your sales organization to be more visible, accountable and predictable, you best ask yourself if you are visible, accountable and predictable. Anything short of your not walking your talk spells frustration, mixed signaling and falling short of expectations. But, that is the topic for another discussion.

About Metricsboard: We are an online benchmark company that provides free business performance benchmark assessments. The benchmarks are automated and take less than 10 minutes online to complete. In return, you receive a full results report with comparison data on best practices, a maturity rating against your competitors (peer group) and strategic recommendations. There is a complimentary benchmark you can take for Web 2.0 Marketing, B2B Sales, IT Infrastructure, Human Resources, Procurement and Corporate Communications. Your privacy is protected and you will not receive any sales follow-up calls.

http://www.metricsboard.com/blog/?p=251

My friend, Rick Toma, of Metricsboard has some great advice for sales leaders.

Tags: accountability, boss, business success, cornerstone, critical success, desire, dialogue, excuse, expecta, expression, facets, friend rick, margins, sales effort, sales leader, sales organization, sales organizations, spectrum, visibility

0 Comments

10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make

September 6, 2010 @ 7:39 pm

posted Tim Antioch

When it comes to starting a successful business there’s no surefire playbook……..

that contains the winning game plan. On the other hand, there are about as many mistakes to be made as there are entrepreneurs to make them.

Recently, after a work-out at the gym with my trainer—an attractive young woman who’s also a dancer/actor—she told me about a web series that she’s producing and starring in together with a few friends. While the series has gained a large following online, she and her friends have not yet incorporated their venture, drafted an operating agreement, trademarked the show’s name or done any of the other things that businesses typically do to protect their intellectual property and divvy up the owners’ share of the company. While none of this may be a problem now, I told her, just wait until the show hits it big and everybody hires a lawyer.

Here, in my experience, are the top 10 mistakes that entrepreneurs make when starting a company:

1. Going it alone. It’s difficult to build a scalable business if you’re the only person involved. True, a solo public relations, web design or consulting firm may require little capital to start, and the price of hiring even one administrative assistant, sales representative or entry-level employee can eat up a big chunk of your profits. The solution: Make sure there’s enough margin in your pricing to enable you to bring in other people. Clients generally don’t mind outsourcing as long as they can still get face time with you, the skilled professional who’s managing the project. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. Eric Ries is experiencing something different. He speaks with WSJ’s Pui-Wing Tam.

2. Asking too many people for advice. It’s always good to get input from experts, especially experienced entrepreneurs who’ve built and sold successful companies in your industry. But getting too many people’s opinions can delay your decision so long that your company never gets out of the starting gate. The answer: Assemble a solid advisory board that you can tap on a regular basis but run the day-to-day yourself. Says Elyissia Wassung, chief executive of 2 Chicks With Chocolate Inc., a Matawan, N.J., chocolate company, “Pull in your [advisory] team for bi-weekly or, at the very least, monthly conference calls. You’ll wish you did it sooner!”

3. Spending too much time on product development, not enough on sales. While it’s hard to build a great company without a great product, entrepreneurs who spend too much time tinkering may lose customers to a competitor with a stronger sales organization. “I call [this misstep] the ‘Field of Dreams’ of entrepreneurship. If you build it, they will buy it,” says Sanjyot Dunung, CEO of Atma Global, Inc., a New York software publisher, who has made this mistake in her own business. “If you don’t keep one eye firmly focused on sales, you’ll likely run out of money and energy before you can successfully get your product to market.”

4. Targeting too small a market. It’s tempting to try to corner a niche, but your company’s growth will quickly hit a wall if the market you’re targeting is too tiny. Think about all the high school basketball stars who dream of playing in the NBA. Because there are only 30 teams and each team employs only a handful of players, the chances that your son will become the next Michael Jordan are pretty slim. The solution: Pick a bigger market that gives you the chance to grab a slice of the pie even if your company remains a smaller player.

5. Entering a market with no distribution partner. It’s easier to break into a market if there’s already a network of agents, brokers, manufacturers’ reps and other third-party resellers ready, willing and able to sell your product into existing distribution channels. Fashion, food, media and other major industries work this way; others are not so lucky. That’s why service businesses like public relations firms, yoga studios and pet-grooming companies often struggle to survive, alternating between feast and famine. The solution: Make a list of potential referral sources before you start your business and ask them if they’d be willing to send business your way.

More Rosalind Resnick

6. Overpaying for customers. Spending big on advertising may bring in lots of customers, but it’s a money-losing strategy if your company can’t turn those dollars into life-time customer value. A magazine or web site that spends $500 worth of advertising to acquire a customer who pays $20 a month and cancels his or her subscription at the end of the year is simply pouring money down the drain. The solution: Test, measure, then test again. Once you’ve done enough testing to figure out how to make more money selling products and services to your customers than you spend acquiring those customers in the first place, roll out a major marketing campaign. (See related article, “On a Tight Budget? How to Land a Client.”)

7. Raising too little capital. Many start-ups assume that all they need is enough money to rent space, buy equipment, stock inventory and drive customers through the door. What they often forget is that they also need capital to pay for salaries, utilities, insurance and other overhead expenses until their company starts turning a profit. Unless you’re running the kind of business where everybody’s working for sweat equity and deferring compensation, you’ll need to raise enough money to tide you over until your revenues can cover your expenses and generate positive cash flow. The solution: Calculate your start-up costs before you open your doors, not afterwards.

8. Raising too much capital. Believe it or not, raising too much money can be a problem, too. Over-funded companies tend to get big and bloated, hiring too many people too soon and wasting valuable resources on trade show booths, parties, image ads and other frills. When the money runs out and investors lose patience (which is what happened 10 years ago when the dot-com market melted down), start-ups that frittered away their cash will have to close their doors. No matter how much money you raise at the outset, remember to bank some for a rainy day.

9. Not having a business plan. While not every company needs a formal business plan, a start-up that requires significant capital to grow and more than a year to turn a profit should map out how much time and money it’s going to take to get to its destination. This means thinking through the key metrics that make your business tick and building a model to spin off three years of sales, profits and cash-flow projections. “I wasted 10 years [fooling around] thinking like an artist and not a business person,” says Louis Piscione, president of Avanti Media Group, a New Jersey company that produces videos for corporate and private events. “I learned that you have to put some of your creative genius toward a business plan that forecasts and sets goals for growth and success.” (See related article, “Are Business Plans a Waste of Time?”)

10. Over-thinking your business plan. While many entrepreneurs I’ve met engage in seat-of-the-pants decision-making and fail to do their homework, other entrepreneurs are afraid to pull the trigger until they’re 100% certain that their plan will succeed. One lawyer I worked with several years ago was so skittish about leaving his six-figure job to launch his business that he never met with a single bank or investor who might have funded his company. The truth is that a business plan is not a crystal ball that can predict the future. At a certain point, you have to close your eyes and take the leap of faith.

Despite the many books and articles that have been written about entrepreneurship, it’s just not possible to start a company without making a few mistakes along the way. Just try to avoid making any mistake so large that your company can’t get back on its feet to fight another day.

About the Author

Rosalind Resnick is the founder and CEO and Axxess Business Consulting Inc., a New York consulting firm that develops business plans and financial projections for start-ups and early-stage companies. She is also the author of “The Vest Pocket Consultant’s Secrets of Small Business Success.”

Tags: business books, dancer actor, eric ries, face time, game plan, management gurus, operating agreement, playbook, public relations web, pui, scalable business, silicon valley, silicon valley entrepreneurs, skilled professional, starting a successful business, successful companies, venture capitalists, web series, wing tam, wsj

1 Comment

Leadership, Thinking Ten Years Ahead

September 4, 2010 @ 4:57 am

posted Tim Antioch

How Leadership Might Look in the Future

by Bob Johansen

What Makes (and Ruins) Great Company Stories

September 3, 2010 @ 3:45 am

posted Tim Antioch

Does your company convey a remarkable story about its products or services?

By Vistage speaker Jeff Ogden

Does your company convey a remarkable story about its products or services? To make your products competitive in a world filled with marketing chatter, you need a memorable story that people want to share with each other. When you use a great story to convey your brand, people start talking about your business.

Seth Godin, the best-selling author of marketing books, writes frequently about the need to develop remarkable content—content, he says, that “the reader finds so interesting, people remark to each other about it.”

Great story-telling engages people on an emotional level and makes them want more. Don Hewitt , the late creator of 60 Minutes, said the success of that show relied on telling great stories.

Story telling can come in many forms. Most companies tell their stories through a mix of media (video, print, web, and audio) across a mix of delivery mechanisms which might include online and print advertising, company Web site, social media, television, events, publicity, or other avenues.

So what are some rules of story-telling that marketers can follow? Let’s look at what makes (and ruins) a great company, brand and product story.

What ruins a great story?
The following elements tend to make a story unremarkable and totally forgettable:

Making claims that your company, service or products are “great” or “the best ever”
Using technical terms or industry jargon that customers don’t understand
Discussing your company history and awards

Check over your marketing collateral, your web site and your advertising. Are you allowing your brand to be totally forgettable?

What makes a great story?
The following elements help make a story remarkable, and so compelling to the reader that they may start telling the others about it. A great story:

Revolves around a single theme
Contains interesting characters
Builds on or is congruent with a back story
Uses engrossing plots with surprises, suspense or twists and turns
Employs vivid language or images that engage the mind
Leverages the voice of your customers
Uses “hooks” that transition from one “chapter” to another. (A hook is a tease of what’s to come, and it keeps the reader looking forward to what’s next.)
Speaks to a specific audience, with specific interests.

Here are two example of remarkable content:

The software company Kinaxis launched a video series entitled Suitemates that makes fun of big software firms.

The blender manufacturer BlendTec created a video series titled Will it Blend? in which the company’s president demonstrates the power of his products by blending everything from golf balls to iPhones. With the enormously popular videos, BlendTec has seen a five-fold increase in sales since launching the series.

So how do you tell a remarkable story? Start with deeply knowing the buyers of your products and services, what I term your customer personas. Once you have a deep understanding of what they care about, you can begin to think about how to create content that gets their attention. Use your imagination and brainstorm. Think of how to entertain and engage.

Vistage speaker Jeff Ogden, is President of Find New Customers, which helps business develop and implement programs to improve the way they find and acquire new customers—it’s “lead generation made simple .” He’s also the author of two highly acclaimed white papers, “How to Find New Customers” and the “Definitive Guide to Making Quota,” as well the eBook, “Prospect Driven Marketing.”

http://www.vistage.com/about-us.aspx

Tags: 60 minutes, advertising company, avenues, company history, company web site, delivery mechanisms, don hewitt, emotional level, industry jargon, jeff ogden, marketers, marketing books, marketing collateral, media television, memorable story, print advertising, remarkable story, seth godin, television events, video print

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Social Media Marketing with YouTube: Why? – BLASTmedia

@ 3:02 am

posted Tim Antioch

Are you looking for a social media marketing firm to handle your next campaign?

(Click’n Play):> Social Media Marketing with YouTube: Why?

Let the agency with a proven track record of social media success handle it. The social media team at BLASTmedia “social media” BLASTmedia “social media youtube” “marketing with youtube” “youtube marketing” “social media agency” “social media firm” “pr firm” “public relations firm” “public relations agency” vseo “video SEO” “youtube video optimization” “youtube secret weapon” “julie perry” “blake fife” Social Media Marketing with YouTube – BLASTmedia The social media team at BLASTmedia has a wealth of experience creating successful YouTube marketing campaigns for our clients — from major consumer tech companies to small businesses and start ups. Whether your company’s goal is list-building and lead generation, search engine optimization (SEO), or simply increasing your social media presence and interactivity, BLASTmedia knows how to make sure you maximize PROFIT with every YouTube video you upload. : : BLASTmedia.com : : Also skilled at social media outreach via YouTube, BLASTmedia can help get your product into the hands of some of the top influencers YouTube has to offer. The results we’ve achieved for our clients in the way of increased exposure, traffic, and conversion (yes, SALES!) is astounding. Contact BLASTmedia today to read some of our case studies! Led by YouTube expert Julie Perry (the featured YouTube expert in Entrepreneur Magazine’s latest book “Success Secrets …

www.BLASTmedia.com

Tags: entrepreneur magazine, fife, generation search, influencers, lead generation, marketing campaigns, marketing firm, media outreach, media presence, optimization seo, perry blake, pr firm, proven track record, search engine optimization, secret weapon, small businesses, success secrets, ups, video optimization, www.Blastmedia.com, youtube video

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Bing vs. Google: The Battle for Your Advertising Dollars

@ 1:18 am

posted Tim Antioch

By Richard Stokes of Entrepreneur.com

If pay-per-click advertising makes sense for your business (and it does for most), then you’re probably already using Google AdWords. But chances are you’ve only dabbled with Yahoo! and Bing advertising. If that’s the case, it may be time to take a closer look at your options. The partnership between Yahoo! and Bing — announced last July — is about to become a reality this fall in the form of a combined pay-per-click platform that will give small-business advertisers an alternative to Google.

Microsoft hopes the partnership will lead to increased search volume, which in turn will attract advertisers to its ad platform. “You need a lot of advertisers to provide the most relevant advertising experience. You don’t want to show an ad for ‘Tacoma plumber’ when a visitor is searching for a plumber in Seattle. The only way to create a market to attract more advertisers is to have a product with a high volume of searchers using it,” says Matt Lydon, general manager of Microsoft advertising.

Will Bing and Yahoo! succeed? That’s anyone’s guess. But in the meantime, here are seven compelling reasons to give advertising on Bing a shot:

Bid prices are lower.
Google has been around far longer and has a more robust advertising marketplace. The result is a saturated marketplace. For any given keyword, there can be dozens — sometimes even hundreds — of companies bidding for placement on the first page of search results. Currently, that line is shorter on Bing, and as a result advertisers can expect to pay less for placement on most keywords.
Conversion rates are better (sometimes).
Google and Bing reach different audiences. Google is the default search engine for most people, so your Google ads are going to appear to a wider demographic. While you can expect your Google campaigns to get plenty of traffic, it typically takes a lot of work to bring conversion rates up to an acceptable level. You won’t get nearly as much traffic from Bing, but you’ll get access to the MSN audience. This can translate into higher sales for certain types of businesses. Compared to Google users, MSN users are older (the bulk are in the 25-54 age range, as opposed to Google’s audience, which ranges from 13-34) and primarily female (57% vs. 50%).These are the customers of choice for most B2C marketers.In addition, you can use AdCenter to target specific MSN properties to reach specific markets. For instance, MSN’s celebrity gossip portal reaches affluent females between the ages 35-49 — customers of choice for many B2C businesses. (For a breakdown of MSN user demographics see the AdCenter Lab.)
Better customer support for small accounts.
Google advertisers who spend more than $500,000 per year have a dedicated account representative who can help with the various technical and billing problems that pop up from time to time. The rest of us have to settle for offshore support which can be, ahem, a less-than-satisfying experience.Bing is attempting to woo the little guy with a higher level of customer support for small advertisers. Aside from being able to talk to an account rep, small advertisers can take advantage of the Quick Launch program, a service that provides you with free advertising consulting. The only requirement is that you spend at least $500 per month — a figure most of us can easily meet.
Search traffic is about to grow. According to Comscore, Google’s search share in May was around 64% compared with Bing’s paltry 12%. If you’ve advertised on Bing already, you’ve probably seen the effects of this when looking at your campaign reports.However, the new partnership will bring Yahoo!’s and Bing’s combined traffic to more than 30% — nearly half of AdWords. This kind of traffic can provide a serious bump to anyone’s PPC campaign.
Advertisers who prepare their campaigns ahead of the partnership will have an advantage over those who wait.
Both Google and Bing require advertisers to establish an account history before their ads will show to a wide audience. On Google, this process can take a few weeks to six months (or longer, depending on how established your competitors are). The same will ultimately be true on Bing.Right now, however, there are relatively few advertisers, so account history is easy to establish. Once the Yahoo! migration is complete (tentatively planned for this fall), it will be much more difficult. So get your campaigns ready now.
You can import your Google campaigns directly into Bing.
Google and Yahoo! have some annoying differences that make it impossible to simply copy-and-paste a campaign between the two. For instance, Yahoo! has a 40-character title limit while Google’s is 25. Yahoo!’s minimum bid is a penny, while Google’s is a nickel.Bing is eliminating these legacy features and standardizing based on Google’s ad formats, match types and minimum prices. This means you’ll be able to import your Google AdWords campaigns into Bing and Yahoo! almost verbatim.
It’s just plain smart to diversify.
If you’ve been advertising on AdWords for some time, you may have been hit with the dreaded “Google slap.” If Google determines that your website is of poor quality, that your ad is a bad match for a particular keyword, or even that your landing page loads too slowly, the company may make changes to your account or even shut it down entirely. Sometimes these slaps are subtle, and other times Google runs amok and shuts down thousands of advertisers at once. (The company banned more than 30,000 accounts during the December ’09 wave, and even more were affected by the July ’07 quality score update.)This unpredictability is, hands down, the single biggest complaint advertisers have with AdWords. More than a few companies have gone out of business because they relied solely on Google for web traffic. This is a critical mistake — one that is difficult to recover from once it happens. Adding a second PPC source to the mix diversifies your traffic and reduces the chance that you’ll wake up one day to find your website has become a ghost town.

Microsoft is betting big on its future in search advertising and investing heavily in a combined platform that is starting to look like a compelling choice over AdWords. If you’ve been sitting on the fence, now might the time to take a chance on something new . . . before your competitors do.

Richard Stokes is the CEO of AdGooroo , the world’s first Search Engine Intelligence company and the author of two books on search marketing, including the bestseller The Ultimate Guide to Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Join the Top 3% Capturing Sales from Search Advertising — and Outsmart 97% of the Competition (Entrepreneur Press, May 2010), available online at Amazon and Borders .

For bios of and stories by Entrepreneur.com columnists, please click here. For more information about Entrepreneur.com click here.

Tags: acceptable level, advertising marketplace, audiences, bid prices, business advertisers, campaigns, closer look, conversion rates, default search engine, entrepreneur, google, google adwords, high volume, pay per click, pay per click advertising, plumber, richard stokes, search volume, searchers, traf

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Business On Google

September 1, 2010 @ 9:00 am

posted Tim Antioch

Increase Your Google Adsense Revenue?

Business On Google by acano

Recently there has been a lot of discussion about people who earn over ,000 a month just from Adsense. Furthermore, there are rumors of a few individuals who earn over million a year just from using the power of Google advertisements.

So what is Google Adsense and how can you use this program to earn a six-figure income?

About two years ago, Google created this program to help websites to monetize their web-traffic.

Here’s how it works:

Webmasters obtain a special code from Google which then displays targeted ads on their website. Whenever a visitor clicks on one of these ads, the webmaster earns a commission. Unlike other online businesses, there is no selling involved. All you need to do is get people to click on the ads.

Although this is an excellent way to generate an income, many websites are not effectively maximizing their Adsense potential. As a result, they are leaving a lot of cash on the table.

The question is how can you increase your Adsense revenue without increasing the number of web visitors? The key to earning an income with Google Adsense is to have your ads match the rest of the site, making them look like part of your content. Your focus is to avoid having the Adsense blocks look like blatant advertisements.

The following are six ways that you can do this and increase your revenue at the same time:

1) Find the right place- Most website visitors read content that is in the middle of a webpage. As a result, the best place to put your Adsense block is in the top part of the page, at the beginning of your web content. You want to weave the Google Ads into your web content to give the appearance that they are extra links which expand on the information of the page.

2) Use the Large Rectangle–With Google Adsense, you have the option of picking different ad formats. Most of the time people opt to use the Leader board (728×90) or Wide Skyscraper (160×600) style ads. Unfortunately, this is the wrong choice, because both look like blatant advertisements. Instead smart webmasters have found that using the Large Rectangle (336×280) yields the best amount of click-thrust.

3) Ditch the border– Many people experience a sharp increase in Adsense revenue when they changing their border. What they change is very simple…they get rid of the border on their Adsense blocks. This is another way to make the advertisements look like useful web content.

4) Adapt the font- Whenever you write content, for more details visit to www.instant-adsense-dollars.com it should be the same font size and style as your Google Adsense block. This will help make it appear that the advertisements are a natural part of your website.

5) Match the colors– In addition to changing the fonts, you also should match the colors of your website. For instance, if your content is written in black, and your hyperlinks are blue, then the Adsense blocks should also be the same color. Again, this helps the advertisements appear to be normal web content.

6) Don’t have too many distractions- On a webpage, it is important to give web visitor a limited number of options. By having too many links and graphics, for more details visit to www.google-atm-machine.com the web visitor might go to a section that doesn’t help increase your profits. While it is important to inform and entertain your web visitor, it is also vital that you monetize your site. So if the main focus of your site is to earn an income through Google Adsense, then get rid of all non-essential links and graphics.

By taking the time to implement these six simple steps, you’ll see a dramatic increase in the click-thru ratio of your ads. If added to all of the content of your site, your Adsense income will skyrocket!

www.thegoogleincome.com
www.yourgoogleincome.com

Tags: ad formats, appearance, blatant advertisements, google, google adsense, leader board, rectangle, six figure income, six ways, skyscraper, web content, web traffic, web visitors, website visitors

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Benefits of Deploying Unified Communications on a Cisco Integrated Network

Leaders: Is Your Sales Organization Visible, Accountable and Predictable?

10 Mistakes That Start-Up Entrepreneurs Make

More Rosalind Resnick

About the Author

Leadership, Thinking Ten Years Ahead

How Leadership Might Look in the Future

by Bob Johansen

What Makes (and Ruins) Great Company Stories

Does your company convey a remarkable story about its products or services?

Bing vs. Google: The Battle for Your Advertising Dollars

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