1. What are Siemens areas of emphasis in 2008? What new products and/or services can we expect from Siemens in 2008?
We have announced and are releasing a comprehensive set of software products and services for Unified Communications based on our OpenScape Unified Communications Server platform that leverages our OpenSOA Framework. With Voice, Video, Messaging, UC, Mobility, and Contact Center applications all taking advantage of this infrastructure and establishing our OpenScale services complete with a Developer’s Ecosystem, we intend to bring Unified Communications to every Siemens customer and make Communications Embedded Business Processes (CEBP) a reality.
• The software foundation for our new offerings is the OpenScape Unified Communications Server. It provides:
• SIP session control for voice, for text, for video
• Presence capabilities, with the ability to go outside the walls of the enterprise
• Quality of service management to manage and give priority to real time traffic on a network
• Session detail reporting. This is not just call detail recording, but detailed recording and reporting on voice calls, instant messaging, emails, conference calls, etc., and even the ability to record some of these things.
• A common management portal and common licensing.
• And availability management -- this means carrier-class scalability for the voice product and more
• Finally we bring in the OpenScale integration services capabilities. We will have integration into the Microsoft and IBM ecosystems, as well as the ability to integrate into other line of business applications through CEBP leveraging our OpenSOA capabilities. This is also how we integrate with vertical industry applications. And we also have state of the art security capabilities.
• And it all works with any client, IP, IT or Telephony infrastructure. That’s right, it can work in virtually any environment out there, legacy TDM, convergence IP-PBX, or modern SIP softswitch.
2. What are some of the emerging trends in the enterprise as they affect contact centers?
There are two significant considerations in the Contact Center space, one strategic and one pragmatic. First, everyone is asking what UC or Unified Communications will bring to the contact center? How will it work, what’s the value, does it negatively impact the rest of the business? Secondly, and more pragmatically, Instant Messaging has become pervasive in both our private lives and in our business environments. Contact Centers want to avail themselves of this one very specific UC tool, but are concerned about how to go about that in a way that provides all the tracking and feedback, control, and benefits demanded from new technologies in the contact center.
3. As you know, Siemens competes with some highly visible vendors, i.e. Aspect, Avaya Cisco. How do you differentiate yourselves from their offerings?
At Siemens we are committed to Open Communications. That’s not just lip service, we’ve built our new OpenScape offerings on a SOA foundation from the ground up and we also no longer depend on any proprietary hardware for these software applications. Furthermore, when we talk about UC in the Contact Center, we can deliver those capabilities today and it doesn’t matter what your definition of UC is. Our products interoperate seamlessly so giving Contact Center agents visibility into the presence of enterprise users and one-click collaboration capabilities is as easy as enabling the license keys for the OpenScape UC Application. And did I say, we can do it today! We’re not promising to develop something in the future, we’ve been offering these capabilities for years now and with the OpenScape UC Server, we put them all on the same foundation.
4. What are the current “hot” areas of interest in mature contact centers?
The definition of mature continues to evolve. With the global economy in its present state and mergers and acquisitions continuing apace, today’s mature environment may be tomorrows struggling enterprise trying to put a round contact center peg into a square customer interaction hole. Change is constant and the multi-vendor environment is the standard. We believe our best in class customers want open solutions that can grow with them and change with them as new architectures evolve or are imposed upon them.
5. What do you consider Siemens’ greatest challenges in penetrating the contact center/CRM market sectors?
We believe that our challenge is similar to that of others in the market, namely staying focused on innovation in order to make an impact in a hyper-competitive environment. We know that today’s new offerings won’t be enough, and that we will have to continue to innovate and deliver state of the art technology solutions that our customers need and want in order to be more successful.
6. Siemens has undergone several changes in their corporate structure over the past few years. Please describe the current structure that incorporates the contact center/UC businesses.
Siemens Enterprise Communications GmbH & Co. KG is one of the world's leading suppliers of Unified Communications technologies. The company's unique Open Communications approach to providing software, solutions and services for enterprises of all sizes enables business processes to be more productive, faster and more secure - with any device, network or information technology infrastructure. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Siemens AG with global headquarters in Munich. OpenScape UC Server and OpenScape Contact Center are a part of an ongooing global software development effort.
7. Siemens has been a strong advocate of “greening”. How is Siemens addressing the greening of the contact center?
Our OpenScape Contact Center package enables the Open Virtualized Contact Center and our Unified Communications solutions ensure mobile and home workers are just as effective as those in an office or remote location. These paradigms decrease energy consumption by reducing the personnel footprint in offices, eliminating travel costs that can be avoided with virtual collaboration technologies, and avoiding costs to commute when work can be performed from the home. Obviously these have “green” benefits, but the bottom line hard dollar savings to enterprises and their employees are even more significant. Of course our commitment to open standards further impacts the environment, positively ensuring that our solutions run on the increasingly efficient hardware coming to market as well as enabling our software applications to be re-useable and allowing our customers to locate our technology solutions independent of geographic constraints as they see fit.
8. Siemens has been at the forefront in leading the Unified Communications bandwagon. What has been the adoption rate? What do you believe are the greatest challenges/obstacles to adoption?
There’s a great deal of FUD in this marketplace, largely due to the evolving nature of the products and their definitions. Most customers have expressed an interest in UC. Many are confused by the offerings coming from our competitors and are not ready to undergo the infrastructure overhaul required by these key market players. Siemens’ open approach to Unified Communications greatly simplifies the impact on existing network infrastructure. By providing standards-based interfaces and using web services and open APIs, we are able to integrate with a broad base of applications and network infrastructure components, resulting in a unique and holistic unified user experience.
Siemens believes our approach to UC is both compelling and simple enough to enable customers to get started right now on the path to experiencing the full benefits of open unified communications.
9. What trends have you identified in users’ purchase criteria over the past year? How do you anticipate that the slowdown in the economy will affect the buying cycle?
The slowdown in the economy makes it even more important to gain control over the escalating costs of fragmented communications that all companies are dealing with today. Customers are increasingly searching for a solution that will add value to the back-office applications they rely on to drive their business. This includes their groupware applications, of course, but also their business portals, CRM applications and the like, as well as their conferencing tools. Once a customer takes the time to understand the benefits that a truly open Unified Communications solution can offer, they realize it’s in line with their top priority business objectives already and it becomes a matter of project planning, rather than an “if UC” question.