Next Generation 9-1-1 is here. (Right?)

This past week is certainly been a busy week for emergency services and Next Generation 911. At the APCO show in Philadelphia FCC Commissioner Julious Genachowski announced, on Wednesday, his continued support for next generation 911 services and deployment, as he has since he took office; This time, however, the national press finally took notice.

Headlines this week brought the subject right over the top, taking it from reporting the actual facts to sensationalism where the facts were stretched just enough to cause the heads of many 'engineers' shake.

"NG 911 Soon a Reality"
"Text and Pictures Now Possible for 911"
"Feds Launch Major Push to Upgrade 911"
"Feds Launch Major 911 Overhaul Including the Big Apple"

The casual reader may think that NG 911 is actually here, and being deployed today, but in reality, we're very much in the planning phase; Although implementation is certainly on the immediate horizon, there's still quite a bit work to be done. Now don't get me wrong, I love all the press that NG 911 is getting, and I think it's absolutely neccessary to raise the public awareness of what can be done. But, we need to be careful not to create false expectations for the masses.

Texting to 911 today

While attending the APCO show in Philadelphia last week with the rest of the Avaya Public Safety Team, Guy Clinch, Tony Jazayeri, and Gavin Lee, I inevitably got into conversations about the text to 911 trials currently happening in both Black Hawk, Iowa and Durham, North Carolina. People would say to me, "we're proving texting to 911 works in those two cities, right now!" And although that is technically true, the pilot program in use there is actually a single carrier, single PSAP solution, that some would argue is not scalable, and is not really proving the technology that is actually needed for a widescale deployment nationwide. Now, I don't mean to cast any doubt on the hard working folks that built those trials, and made them work, I just want the general public to understand what they are, and what they are not.

Technology vs. Politics

When you step back and look at it, some of the political barriers are as menacing as the technology barriers for NG 911 services. For years we've relied on telephone numbers and matching addresses known as ANI and ALI, and lookups in databases provided quietly but reliably by a small handful of companies in the background. Although their names are fairly well known inside of the public safety industry, very few citizens have heard them before. These companies have significant revenues built on the existing E911 network model, and NG911 is a disruptive factor to that revenue.

E911 is built on an architecture that relies on ANI and ALI databses. As we migrate from the legacy network to the next generation network, the need for those databases, in their current form, will diminish as technology moves forward and devices become smarter. It's very much like going to a foreign country, where you don't speak the language, and walking around with a translator. If during your travels you end up learning language yourself, you don't need to translator anymore.

LOCATION BY REFERENCE MODEL

The service that is being provided today is called a location by reference model. In other words, the originating device is not actually sending the location the public safety, it's sending them a telephone number that is a reference number. That number they can be utilized to retrieve the address information from the carriers master address database.

LOCATION BY VALUE MODEL

What next generation 911 brings the table is a new model called location by value. Quite simply put, it's a data location object that simply says, "I'm here, come and get and me!". If the user wants to provide extended information, a URL can be provided that links back to a server with the information for that particular call event. In the enterprise environment, I call this the ELM server, or Emergency Location Management server. Typically this would sit in the DMZ and proxy intelligent information from the enterprise network to public safety on the public side of the network.

So is next generation 911 here today? No, it's not.

What is here today though is the structure and guidelines needed to define what the end state vision is. This is enough to allow public safety answer points to move forward with RFI and RFP opportunities, it's enough to where manufacturers such as Avaya, can move forward with technology based on open interfaces and standards, and it's enough for enterprise businesses to take notice that the information stored in their networks today, will be a valuable asset to public safety tomorrow.

Network administrators need to think about emergency services, how it works, and how to get information about its user population and their location to public safety when people need help.

This applies to all devices, on all networks, and in all locations.

 By Mark J. Fletcher, ENP | 15 Aug 2011

Avaya Goes Mainstream TV?

(MARKETING NOTE TO SELF: People really, really like being on TV)

Check out Avaya social media chatter this week and you'll quickly see that Avaya was recently on The Learning Channel's reality TV show "Cake Boss." It's been all the buzz on Twitter and Facebook - not just with Avaya employees, customers and partners, but even analysts and reporters are commenting about their 'cameos' on the show. It's amazing. In fact, I think this should be added as one of "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" - "If you get someone on TV, they'll go nuts creating buzz around it."

Now, I may not be a huge fan of reality TV, but you can't argue that this isn't a good step for the New Avaya.

Let me back up and explain... If you go back to my May 17th post, you can read about our "Think Big" launch event for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises where this all started. As part of this event, we invited Buddy Valastro, star of the hit TLC TV series "Cake Boss" to participate in a customer roundtable to talk about our IP Office products.

And, of course, we ordered a cake.

Thanks to the creative thinking of Cake Boss, they came up with the idea of building our gear into the cake and placing a live video call via..., well,THE CAKE. Next thing we know, Buddy isn't just speaking at our event, but Avaya gets woven into an episode of the actual show. Here, look:

Buddy and Alan Baratz:


This is an "interactive" cake, folks:

And, well, this is a cake video call:

Besides seeing myself for 1.5 seconds in the audience on the show, here's why i think this is really cool. It's another step in the right direction for the New Avaya. Let's face it, many people still think of Avaya as a stodgy, old school, Ma Bell-spin off telephone company. But given the new direction of the company - our new tagline: "Avaya. The Power of We.", our focus on business collaboration, all the cool new technology (See Flare, web.alive, ACE, Social Media Manager - just to name a few), 'old school' is clearly no longer what Avaya is anymore. I mean, there's just no way Avaya is mainstream enough to make reality TV five years ago... pure and simple.

And to celebrate, we hosted employee viewing parties across Avaya's campus earlier today with (you guessed it, more cake). Here are more photos:

You can check out more photos on Avaya's Facebook page here.

And finally, back to my "23rd" Immutable Law of Marketing - I just can't help myself... here's yours truely with Buddy:

Posted 28 Jul 2011 at 08:37 PM

Avaya Sponsors ITEXPO West in Austin, Kicks off Program with Pre-Event Seminar on September 12, 2011

Norwalk, CT, August 3, 2011 – TMC (News - Alert) announced that Avaya is returning to sponsor ITEXPO, September 13-15, in the Austin Convention Center. Avaya will once again kick off the program with a pre-event seminar entitled “The Millennial Generation – Are You Ready?” discussing how Generation Y will challenge and ultimately change enterprises, as both customers and employees. This event, scheduled for September 12, 2011, will take place at the Omni Hotel, and is open to ITEXPO conference attendees.


ITEXPO is the world’s largest and best-attended communications and technology trade show. ITEXPO West is currently ranked as the No. 3 fastest-growing event on Trade Show Executive Magazine’s Fastest 50 List. TMC expects to accelerate ITEXPO West’s growth by bringing the show to Austin, one of the fast-growing technology hubs in the U.S.
For the last five years, Avaya’s “Technology on Tap” pre-conference event has served as the unofficial “kick-off” for ITEXPO. This year Avaya and their featured speaker, Stuart Beame, IQPC’s (News - Alert) 2010 Contact Center Leader of the Year finalist, will share insights into the mindset and expectations of the Millennial Generation as they begin to interact with enterprises as both consumers and employees. Avaya will also provide updates on emerging collaboration technologies, such as Avaya web.alive, and how social media will influence the evolution of the contact center.
“The Millennial Generation is the first workforce and consumer segment raised in an era of instant communications, from email and IM to text messaging and even presence-enabled video communications,” explained Jon Alperin, managing director at Avaya DevConnect (News - Alert). “When you add to that familiarity with smartphones, social networking and even multiplayer gaming environments, it’s clear that this generation will be entering the workforce with a different mindset towards collaboration technology. Equally important, as they enter the workforce, they also represent an important customer demographic for many businesses. The traditional customer interaction channels used to serve target customers may be insufficient to engage with these new consumers.”
“Avaya’s technology overlaps many aspects of the ITEXPO conference, and their solutions target the full audience of resellers, enterprise customers, SMBs, and developers that walk the floor of the expo,” said Rich Tehrani (News - Alert), CEO and conference chairman for TMC. “We welcome Avaya back for a seventh year, including this fifth consecutive pre-event kickoff, and we’re looking forward to sharing Avaya’s content with the audience in Austin.”
Registration for ITEXPO and the Avaya Technology on Tap Event: The Millennial Generation – Are You Ready? are open.
Exhibit and sponsorship opportunities are available, contact TMC’s Joe Fabiano at (203-852-6800 x132) for more information. Members of the media can reserve press credentials by contacting Todd Keefe at For Immediate Release PR.