Fred Knight was part of the team that launched the VoiceCon Conference in 1990. He served as Program Chairman through 2003 when he also became VoiceCon General Manager. Since then, VoiceCon has grown into the leading event for enterprise IP Telephony, converged networks and unified communications.
Fred led the evolution of VoiceCon from an annual conference into a 12-month per year operation, comprising two major conferences: VoiceCon Orlando and VoiceCon San Francisco: the VoiceCon Webinar series and two e-newsletters: VoiceCon eNews and VoiceCon UC eWeekly.
From 1984-2007 Fred was editor and then publisher of Business Communications Review. During that period, he covered the ensuing tumultuous changes that dramatically changed the industry. Under his stewardship, BCR received numerous awards from industry and publishing groups and associations.
In December 2007, BCR ceased publication and the editorial product shifted to the Web with the creation of a new website: NoJittier.com. Fred has managed the organization's migration from print to electronic publishing and serves as publisher of NoJitter.com.
Fred earned his BA in journalism at the University of Minnesota and a Master's Degree in public administration from The Maxwell School, Syracuse University.
UC has evolved into a code word for a new approach, one that encompasses the full continuum of communications hardware and software systems.
Do phones have a future in the enterprise? Sure. The way things stand today, just about every type of phone has a future in the enterprise.
While UC continues to evolve, many of UC's elements--IM, presence, all manner of conferencing and video--are no longer "new" or "innovative" or "exotic" capabilities.
Those who expect more may well be proven right, but not for a while.
"UC in the cloud is a natural fit and let's face it, if the SMB market alone adopts the cloud as a model it's a big win."
If, as many argue, UC delivers the biggest ROI when it is integrated into business processes, I wonder if the cloud will be selected as the deployment path.
Interoperability, in the sense of full feature/function transparency or interchangeable parts, however, remains an unfulfilled goal.
Today the cloud is all the rage. So, have the carriers stepped up to the plate on UC? Well, still not so much.
A lot of hard work is needed to update architectures, interoperability, integration processes and tools for managing and troubleshooting.
"We don't see it as a bubble but instead a natural means of conducting business."
The likely scenario is that once economic stability returns, managed/hosted solutions will return to their historic levels.
Unified Communications revenues declined, but only by single-digits--down 5% year-over-year.
As expected, Unified Communications took center stage during last week's VoiceCon San Francisco conference. With few exceptions, sessions that had Unified Communications in the title were the highest attended within their respective time blocks, and the UC theme was dominant in the keynotes from vendors.
Given the current market climate, if customers are saying that vendors are "making it harder for us to actually buy a solution...." isn't it time for the industry to rethink its modus operandi?
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