Clarus Systems (News - Alert) was founded in 2001 to support an early adoption of IP Telephony including deployment certification products for System Integrators. In response to changing market demands Clarus augmented their product offering in 2005 by developing robust operations management capabilities, enhanced its managed service provider relationships and added several dominating financial services leaders as key clients in 2006 and enhanced their offerings by adding Transformation Services to support and manage the entire IP telephony lifecycle in 2007.

 

Richard Whitehead is CTO of Clarus Systems. I had the opportunity to speak to Whitehead about the company and about some of the trends taking place in the industry today.

 

RW: People are getting serious about the implications of Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC), and by people, I mean end users rather than suppliers.

 

The concept of UC has been around for ages, and I doubt any enterprise IT person doubts the potential; it’s just that they finally feel enough technology changes have occurred, that the vendors may actually be able to deliver on the promise this time.

 

With significant adoption of SIP, the last remaining barrier to heterogeneous UC is the commitment to implementation of a solid IP Communications infrastructure. Ensuring the viability of this infrastructure is our core business, and we see enterprise end-users getting very serious about this.

 

RW: Yes! Better even. We closed 2007 with a record quarter, making it a record year. Our customer base increased dramatically, including some of the largest IP Communications users in the world.

 

RW: Undoubtedly, our products are being very well received, and our existing customers are all indicating they will increase their investment in our solutions.

 

RW: There have been quite a few, but I think for 2007, the most significant impact has been the inflection point in terms of enterprise adoption of IP communications, specifically the committed push from labs and pilot projects, to full adoption and production use,

 

We’ve been very lucky to have been involved in some of the larger, more public successes, and see this as being a significant and extremely important shift, as a solid, reliable IP communications infrastructure is a fundamental foundation to Unified Communications.

 

RW: Two ways. By placing considerable price pressure on the long distance carriers and by proving to millions of people that Internet telephony is technically viable.

 

RW: By mainstreaming the technologies, and in many cases making them consumer-cool.

 

I firmly believe that one of the biggest challenges to IT departments is that the pressure to adopt technology within businesses has inverted.

 

Instead of the IT department pushing reluctant employees to use new technologies, like they did with copiers, fax machines and even computers, the users themselves are demanding innovations.

 

“How come I can share pictures and video with my family thousands of miles away, but not documents with my co-workers?” “How come my child can send me a text message while I’m in a meeting, but I get a busy tone when I try and call a customer?”

 

RW: The increase in commitment to IP communications, and the acknowledgement of it’s fundamental role in UC, has lead to an equivalent understanding of the unique value Clarus Systems provides in empowering Unified Communications, through the company’s “four pillars” that address the IP communications lifecycle; automated testing, trouble shooting/diagnostics, business intelligence/reporting and passive monitoring.

 

RW: At this stage, with our demonstrated success, it would have to be the impact of macro-economic conditions on the rollout of IP communications infrastructure within large enterprises.

 

RW: A hype-less introduction to the basic components of Unified Communications, and some invaluable advice on how to achieve success. How the management of an IP telephony infrastructure can be integrated into an IT department in a non-disruptive manner closely aligned with ITIL best practices.

 

RW: CIO’s, Voice Engineers, and IT staff involved in the deployment, use and planned adoption of IP Telephony and Unified Communications.

 

RW: The advice and suggestions are based on the experiences of Clarus Systems being involved in the validation of the deployment and operation of hundreds of thousands of IP communications end-points.

 

RW: The disruptive impact of Unified Communications driving innovation in management technology, and forcing the adoption of IT best practices.

 

RW: That the PBX, in its new generation, multi-media, multi-modal, open, distributed form, actually becomes MORE important in large enterprises, not less. And yes, even Microsoft (News - Alert) will build one!