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How should companies choose suppliers of CEBP?
First, a company has to be committed to an IP telephony deployment and also committed to unified communication. Then, it is highly likely that whomever the company chose for IP telephony is going to be a major player in their unified communications — and very likely to be the big player in their deployment of CEBP.
It will make sense for them to follow the "trajectory" of the vendor that they chose for IP telephony in the first place.
Which companies are thought leaders and who can execute on the CEBP model?
There are two, possibly three companies. Avaya is the leader in the industry with their "Intelligent Communications" because they are the ones who foresaw the wave of CEBP coming into the marketplace and have organized to capitalize on it. Avaya's large professional services organization is a necessary part of organizing to provide CEBP.
The second thought leader is a new alliance between Microsoft and Nortel, called ICA. Since they are just beginning to talk about CEBP, they are behind Avaya.
So far Cisco Systems is involved in Unified Communications, the second stage of IP telephony. But when they see the importance of CEBP, they will participate in one way or another.
Why do you see Avaya as a market leader for CEBP?
Avaya has the thought leadership position. Avaya also has the underlying technology and foundational elements around which IT developers can begin writing applications to take human and systems delay out of their company's business processes.
The most exciting thing currently about Avaya's solutions is that they are accompanied by a professional services organization that can really deliver all the consulting, design, vision, implementation and management of all the CEBP solutions.
Another exciting thing about Avaya is that they are not only a product company but provide a clear transition from product/hardware to a software as a service configuration. Having a professional services organization that is half the size of the company is testimony to that. Consequently, before long, Avaya's CEBP solutions will make an enormous difference in overall business productivity.
What should Avaya's CEBP strategy be?
In terms of players in the marketplace today, Avaya's CEBP strategy is clearly to maintain its position of thought leadership now and move into early implementation as the technologies develop and the market demands them.
As an industry analyst what affects you most about covering and commenting on CEBP?
There have always been waves of productivity and waves of economic activity that have driven the global economy. In the 1980s there was the global competition primarily between the US and Japan. In the 1990s there was the Internet.
In the first part of this century I believe it will be CEBP. I believe CEBP will have the same kind of impact as the US competition with Japan, where organizations started a whole new process of re-engineering corporate business processes that really went from the top down. We all retooled the way we approached business on a global basis. The US did that in the 1980s because of competitive pressures from a foreign nation.
CEBP will also have as much impact as the Internet era of the 1990s where we looked at business processes in new ways because of a new technology that enabled us to be much more efficient. Now with CEBP, a new technology will again enable us to plan for a huge wave of productivity and efficiency gains. To be a part of that and contribute to it and provide leadership is exciting.
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