Jorge Blanco, Avaya'�s Vice President of Solutions & Software Portfolio Management joined me on the Lippis Report podcast to discuss Avaya's Unified Communications (UC) portfolio.  Many companies are using the term Unified Communication to describe different things.  Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications.  Some use UC to describe communications enabled business process.  Some use UC to describe both.  In this podcast we talk to the man at Avaya in charge of it all and get the scoop on how Avaya defines the term and what's included in their Unified Communications offering.  This is one of our best podcast with a fresh off the cuff discussion on UC.  So listen up.

Where is networking heading over the next three to five years?  Zeus Kerravala, SVP Enterprise Research at the Yankee Group joins me for an industry roundtable discussion on the direction our industry is heading.  Is Moore’s Law about to collide with Metcalfe's Law bringing new combinations of companies and restructuring the industry?  Will the industry continue to be dominated by one company or will we see a major roll-up occur.  Will computing and networking firms combine to tightly link networks and application delivery?  We provide you a framework for how the industry may progress over the next three to five years.  Enjoy, Nick

Don Reece the Director of Information Technology at Pembina Trails, a Public School Division in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada joins the Lippis Report podcast to discuss his newly installed unified communications implementation.  Pembina Trails has an enrollment of approximately 14,000.  They have a network of dark fiber backbone between sites running at a gigabit, Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange, Dell Ethernet Switches and a very old voice system.  It was time to upgrade the voice system, so they did it with Objectworld’s Unified Communications Server and saved over $200K while offering a state-of-the-art IP telephony system.  Don goes into all the details.  It’s a great listen.  Enjoy Nick.