Eric Bauer – Former Product Director of Unified Communications

Skype for Business and Microsoft Cloud are redefining collaboration. Forming the cornerstone of Microsoft's Universal Communications strategy, to enable real-time collaboration across any device, the next step is to introduce full PSTN functionality in Skype for Business. In this recent interview posted to the IR-Podcast, Eric Bauer - Head of Product Marketing, shares his thoughts on how Microsoft is working toward their vision of modern...

Microsoft's Enterprise Voice offering continues to grow at a rapid rate, with the company's intentions very clear to enable voice communications for all of their users. The recent announcement of the E5 licensing (to be discussed in an up-coming post) provides a clear path for organizations to migrate from their existing PBX, to a hybrid solution and, eventually, to a full-blown Microsoft deployment.

When Microsoft announced Lync would become Skype for Business, there were many questions around what it would mean for their unified communications services. In the first episode from the IR-Podcast, Eric Bauer shares his thoughts on why Microsoft made the change.

The Microsoft Lync SDN (Software-Defined Networking) API allows developers to build applications and services to monitor, isolate and correct issues that affect the user experience on Lync / Skype for Business. 

If you were to ask your IT manager whether they have customers or users, what would they say? Though somewhat subtle in nature, this simple fact is an area that's overlooked way too often. If you think about it, when you are trying to acquire B2C or B2B sales, you consider them customers and treat them in the best way possible - we're all familiar with the mantra that the customer is always right.

“Please be advised that your call may be recorded”. With those words I was put through to an operator to help sort out my latest phone bill. We've all heard this before, contact centers have been recording calls for many years, whether for quality and training purposes or to record contractual agreements, but what happens when that recording doesn't actually work?

Imagine a situation where you're trying to buy an item from an online retailer like Amazon. You'd like to speak with an agent and ask a few questions about the product. By clicking one button, you're connected with the agent and are able to have a real-time, one-on-one voice conversation. Gone are the days where that kind of collaboration required many complex systems behind the scenes. Now only minimal back-end software is required to complete...

Back in November when Microsoft first announced its decision to re-brand Lync as Skype for Business, the level of chatter went through the roof. Some were saying it was the best move ever. Others were saying it was the worst move ever. To me, I really saw this as Microsoft adopting an Apple-like approach to consumerize the platform.

Microsoft has made their vision of universal communications very clear: anybody should be able to talk to anyone else using the device of their choosing. While this is a compelling concept, it can become a challenge in actual practice. Microsoft is bringing their vision to fruition by moving the end user's entire workload into the cloud. It began with IM, chat and internal PC to PC calling. Now they're starting to roll out full PSTN connectivity...

The Microsoft Lync / Skype for Business SDN API is a robust, continually evolving capability that brings insight and control of your Microsoft communications environment.  Generally speaking, there are three key roles where the SDN API provides value:

Imagine you're trying to book a flight. You call the toll-free number and use the interactive voice response (IVR) to get through to bookings, but instead you are put through to the baggage area. You hang up and try again, but this time you wind up speaking to the airline lounge. Do you try a third time or call a competitor? I know what I would do.

IT Service Management (ITSM) refers to the activities – directed by policies, processes and supporting procedures –  performed by an organization to plan, deliver, operate and control IT services. Traditionally this has excluded the UC side of the business, with separate teams in place to look after the voice technologies. In this latest release from the IR-Podcast, Eric Bauer - Global Head, Product Marketing discusses why ITSM has previously...

Big data is an ambiguous buzzword that means different things to different people. At its core, it's primarily a broad term for datasets so large traditional processing can't handle them. Big data for unified communications analytics is often an obsession for both the media and entrepreneurs, with billions of dollars being poured into software development on a yearly basis. In this blog post I discuss how big data is helping change the unified...

IT service management (ITSM) is a broad category encompassing supporting procedures an organization performs to plan, deliver, operate and control the IT services it offers to internal and external customers. It's a multi-billion dollar industry, involving companies such as ServiceNow, which is a cloud-based ITSM platform and one of the leaders in this space.