CSI: UC Our CTO, Joe Fuccillo often uses a crime investigation as an analogy for diagnosing communications quality issues within a UC deployment. A crime has occurred; the user is the victim. The initial list of potential suspects is long and varied: from the WAN, to the network components, to the premise Wi-Fi, to the

Reflections on Enterprise Connect 2016 Matt Christopher March at the Gaylord Palms, Orlando I have honestly lost track of how many Enterprise Connects I have attended. Actually, I lied.  Sorry about that.  I have been to every Enterprise Connect.  I have lost track of how many VoiceCon’s I attended. Over the years, it has been

Lessons Learned In My First Year as a Microsoft IT Pro Tools Partner for Skype for Business Matt Christopher, VP Customer Experience, Nectar Looking Back As I was on the 5 hour flight home from Orlando, digging out of my e-mail inbox after 3 days at Enterprise Connect, I began to reflect on the past

Could SDN Help Reduce Some Complexity Of A UC Deployment? Matt Christopher February 24, 2016 A Brief History of Enterprise Voice Through the last few decades of the 20th century, traditional TDM PBX’s, for the most part, were easy enough to troubleshoot and maintain.  When there was an issue, it was either the phone, the

How collecting, correlating, and surfacing the proper data identifies and solves issues faster Matt Christopher December 15, 2015 Cheesy Business School Anecdote There is an old business school anecdote about a gentleman, we’ll call him Nick Tar, who retired after working at the same factory for decades. No one knew the assembly line or machinery

My Love Language As someone who writes a lot, I have a certain love and appreciation for words. Words should paint a picture, they should flow, and they should also fit nicely on a page.   When companies change their product names, they change the words.  I do not think Microsoft considered the impact it would

Standing on the Shoulders Of A UC Editor and Calling Myself Tall Today, I was reading Beth Shultz’s recent No Jitter article, 7 Skype for Business Deployment Gotchas to Avoid. I believe that Beth and the panelists she cited were spot on with their assessment of some key areas overlooked in UC deployments. Here is

Churchill Said it Best… Monitoring, Diagnostics, and Reporting Can Ensure UC Presents Well Matt Christopher August 31, 2015 Confessions of A UC Blogger I am a shameless Microsoft UC apologist. I have been involved with Microsoft UC since LCS. I have always been an early adopter and have advocated for Microsoft UC for over a

Hindsight May be 20/20, But Let’s Keep the Horses in the Barn – Part Two The Significance of Proactive Monitoring to Minimize Negative User Impact and Optimize User Satisfaction Matt Christopher July 29, 2015 In our last blog post, we detailed the nightmare of trying to reduce user frustration with quick resolution of issues within

The Significance of Proactive Monitoring to Minimize Negative User Impact and Optimize User Satisfaction Matt Christopher July 10, 2015 Given the complexity of a UC deployment with its variety of software, servers, circuits, gateways, routers, switches, and devices, user-impacting issues are understandably unavoidable. When you consider the number of potential steps between a problem occurring