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Here’s a thing I’ve been wondering about: Could Microsoft Office Communications Server drive carrier-based call control (i.e., what we used to call “IP-Centrex”)?

The thinking would be that, for the near future, OCS isn’t going to have some of the basic call control functionality you need, so you’ll have to supplement it with an IP-PBX…or its cloud-based equivalent.

If your enterprise is a Microsoft shop, and expects to continue to be a Microsoft shop, and expects to deploy OCS (or has already begun deploying OCS), you have a bit of a dilemma today: You can plot out a whole parallel IP-PBX strategy to get you through the next several years, while Microsoft ramps up OCS’s telephony capabilities. But you could wind up with stranded or duplicated investments, as OCS becomes increasingly capable of doing what those “voice” vendor platforms do, in terms of call control.

So if you’re committed to Microsoft’s long-term vision, you’d probably like to avoid making that investment in IP-PBX platforms. Especially as many of the platform vendors begin emphasizing their core competency in call control (see my recent Siemens post on No Jitter, and a VoiceCon eNews entry from last year about Nortel).

Add to this the fact that the one area where SIP standardization seems to be advancing the fastest is in SIP trunking. The SIP Forum has come up with a technical recommendation called SIPconnect, which the Forum describes as, “a standards-based recommendation that provides detailed guidelines for direct IP peering and interoperability between IP PBXs and VoIP service provider networks.” I recently talked with Eric Burger, chairman of the board of the Forum, and Marc Robbins, the Forum’s managing director, and they said seven companies are SIPconnect compliant: Acme Packet, Avaya, Broadsoft, CBeyond, Digium, Ingate and McLeod Communications. And Avaya had some SIP-trunk-related enhancements in its latest release of the core Communications Manager software (see “Avaya Announces SIP Upgrades to Communications Manager,” at nojitter.com ).

Now, that list of compliant vendors and carriers is extremely short, and leaves off a lot of key players, namely the 2 major telcos, and all the major voice platform vendors besides Avaya—(though Eric and Marc say Nortel was heavily involved in writing the SIPconnect specs and is expected to come on board soon). But Broadsoft is definitely a key “get,” since their platform is used by so many of the major carrier organizations.

The problem is that right now, the big carriers have been less than aggressive about SIP trunking, and the service is a non-starter for the enterprise until that changes.

This might be the carriers’ last big chance to sell something for enterprise voice other than SIP trunks. Enterprises are moving relatively slowly on their VOIP adoption, but they are moving, and the more time passes, the more committed the enterprise becomes to whatever strategy it commits to—whether that strategy is built around Microsoft or one of the incumbent voice vendors.

And yet, even as I write this, I don’t see it happening. It just doesn’t seem like the carriers’ style. They don’t seem to be interested in selling anything other than vertically-integrated services, and they’d rather sell less of those than more of a type of service that works with other elements of an enterprise communications environment.

Of course, it’s not a certainty that Microsoft will dominate enterprise communications to the extent that it dominates office applications and leads the market in email, so the opportunity isn’t a slam-dunk for the carriers. But then, nobody’s got any guarantees in this market right now.

What do you think? Drop me a note here in the VoiceCon Enews Forum or directly at ekrapf@cmp.com

Eric H. Krapf
Editor & Lead Blogger, NoJitter.com
VoiceCon Program Chai

Posted in Implementation, Unified Communications, VOIP, Market Trends, Carriers |

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