Carousel Industries to Lead Training Seminars at Int'l Avaya Users Group Global Education Conference

May 21, 2012 - PRLog -- Exeter, Rhode Island, May 17, 2012 -- Carousel Industries, a leader in data networking and converged communications, announced that it will lead four separate presentations at the International Avaya Users Group (IAUG) Global Education Conference, which will take place in Boston between May 20th and May 24th in Boston. Each session will be led by Carousel experts and will run between an hour and an hour and a half. The sessions will focus on how end-users can best leverage Avaya technology to improve productivity and collaboration in a secure manner within the enterprise.

“Carousel is pleased once again to lead key seminars at the IAUG Global Education Conference. With the technology behind unified communications becoming increasingly complex, it is a great opportunity to share our accumulated knowledge on a variety of technical topics,” said Lucy C. Graham, director of marketing, Carousel Industries. “The seminars will provide information end-users need to make the greatest use out of their Avaya UC solutions.”

Following are dates, times and a detailed description of each session:

Can’t See the Forest OR the Trees? Best Practices for a Cohesive Visual Communications Solution in the Enterprise
Presented by Dan Hofferty of Carousel Industries (May 20, 3:30 p.m., Room 208)
Enterprise organizations consistently struggle with incorporating a cohesive visual component into their unified communications environment. Untangling the endpoints so infrastructure components can effectively call to each other presents yet another challenge to a streamlined solution. This session will discuss how to incorporate and deploy inherently competitive technologies, such as the Avaya Flare, 1X Communicator, Microsoft Lync or Polycom endpoints, into your solution without sacrificing your cohesive vision. Dan Hofferty will share best practices on how to solve the most common challenges and the pros and cons of each solution.

Show Me the Money! Leveraging Social Media in the Enterprise
Presented by Jason Aubee, Director of Strategic Consulting services of Carousel Industries (May 21, 1:30 p.m., Room 311)
Social media can have a tremendous financial impact on the enterprise – both positive and negative. Jason Aubee will discuss proactive, reactive, and constructive social media strategies and how to leverage each to your best financial advantage, specifically looking at processes, programs, and technologies like Avaya Social Media Manager. Proactive brand management includes positive ways in which you can increase brand awareness, name recognition, or interest in your organization or product through social media tools such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Reactive brand management includes tools and technologies which help your organization monitor and manage negative references to your brand or product. Constructive brand management determines how all of that information plugs into your contact center. This session will explore how a comprehensive approach to leveraging the best that social media has to offer can be the key to wisely managing your brand awareness, having control over your public perception, and ultimately generating success throughout your organization.

PDAs in the Enterprise – Pros and Cons for the Security Conscious
Presented by Mike Burgess, Director of Pre-Sales Engineering of Carousel Industries (May 21, 1:30 p.m., Room 312)
PDAs are a growing presence in the enterprise, presenting technical and security challenges with each new user. Executives enjoy the CapEx funding increase (thanks to employees supplying their own equipment) and employee mobility but worry about the underlying risk of loss of intellectual property. Mike Burgess will discuss these trends, explore the most common challenges they entail, and present solutions to those challenges. He will also discuss best practices Carousel has developed to address common – and not-so-common – customer scenarios, including the special challenges related to mobile and wireless networking.

Microsoft Lync / OCS Integration in a Unified Communications Environment – Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them
Presented by Thomas Herr, Lead Architect/SIP Solutions of Carousel Industries (May 22, 2:00 p.m., Room 201)
Today’s unified communications customers want to be able to leverage the best applications and technologies for their UC environments, but integrating different manufacturers’ components can be tricky. Avaya and Microsoft Lync and OCS can be successfully blended for an ideal solution, but a savvy provider needs to understand the nuances of each product’s capabilities and limitations. Up-front planning and evaluation is critical to ensure a UC solution meets the end-user needs without resulting in feature collisions, application “dis-integration,” or conflicting functionality between mobile and desktop users. This session will explore the many different integration options between Microsoft and Avaya in order to craft the best possible solution for several customer scenarios. Thomas Herr will also discuss the most common challenges encountered in reconciling a customer’s specific needs with all of the features and functionality these products offer. Lastly, Herr will offer Carousel’s best practices on how to resolve those challenges, so your customers get the solution they need with the features they want.

In addition to the above sessions, Carousel will also be hosting ongoing demonstrations of SmartPoint, Carousel’s managed services offering.  This will be presented by Mark Damphousse, Carousel’s Director of Managed Services in the Carousel Industries booth at the IAUG Solutions Expo.

As organizations begin to enjoy the benefits of unified communications systems, IT leaders are faced with challenges such as complexity, budget constraints, 24x7 demand, and lack of visibility in the converged environment.  For most IT organizations today, 80% of IT resources are devoted to simply maintaining day-to-day operations, and the related costs of maintenance and repair are rising faster than budgets. Damphousse will discuss how SmartPoint by Carousel is a flexible compilation of services designed to proactively deliver IT support with advanced business service monitoring, streamlined workflow, intelligent IT planning and ongoing operational support.

For more information on the IAUG conference, including additional details on these training tracks, please visit the IAUG website.