This week’s issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by Unified Communication Strategies:

Unified Communication Strategies is an industry resource and web portal to help enterprises, vendors, and system integrators develop their UC strategies. A source of objective information and thought leadership on Unified Communications, we provide analysis, executive interviews, podcasts, white papers, and other information on the UC industry. Visit our website for more detail: http://www.ucstrategies.com/

The race to deliver Unified Communications (UC) is on. PBX vendors—both old and new guard—are working hard to integrate their communication silos, while software vendors are enhancing current offerings by adding call control (aka PBX features).

One thing all the vendors agree on is that enterprises will need a long-term plan for UC. They differ, however, in their views of what that solution should look like. Should you work with your switch vendor and implement their current or future UC offering? Should you wait and see what Microsoft, IBM or other business application vendors introduce? Or should you add UC via the network as Cisco suggests? There are going to be many paths to UC, no single one is right for everyone.

The question I’m asked most frequently is: How will Microsoft’s UC announcements affect my company and our UC strategy? Microsoft has thrown down the gauntlet and is causing a lot of FUD in the minds of both vendors and enterprises. Case in point: Microsoft has been quoting a Gartner publication suggesting that purchasing an IP PBX today may be “an architectural dead end.” This, of course, is self-serving for Microsoft, which does not have a call control offering today and wants customers to wait for its solution—which won’t be released until sometime in Q2 2007.

Microsoft’s not-so-subtle suggestion: Enterprises should hold off on purchasing an IP PBX and wait for Microsoft’s future offering. A good idea for Microsoft, but not necessarily the right decision for most enterprises. Microsoft’s initial call control offering will have limited features and functionality, especially when compared with traditional PBXs, which have hundreds of features. Of course, there will likely be departments within enterprises that can benefit from the added functionality of a tightly integrated Microsoft UC solution, but most users will expect and demand traditional PBX features and capabilities.

But what about the “architectural dead end” issue—is this really the case? Well, probably not—at least not for the next few years, anyway. Microsoft’s UC solution will be able to interface to any TDM- or IP-PBX via a CSTA interface, and most PBXs sold in the past 10 years support CSTA. So, contrary to Microsoft’s position, I believe that working with your choice of PBX vendor(s) today will most likely provide you with the flexibility of adding a UC solution down the road—whether from your switch vendor or Microsoft. But be wary—there are many potential dead-end products that will not have a migration path to a UC solution, so make sure that whichever solution you look at today, it will help you get where you want to be.

Enterprises need to start thinking about their UC strategies and start asking some key questions.

• First, evaluate your current environment with an eye toward those areas that will need to migrate to a UC solution. Take an inventory of where you are today, including your switch and application products, and whether they can work together.
• Think about your desktop applications and how they will fit—what’s on your desktop today, and what will be there in a couple years—is it Microsoft, IBM, or something else?
• Talk to your switch vendor(s), find out about their UC strategy and see if their UC components will work with those from other vendors.

We hope you’ll find many of the answers you’re looking for in the coming issues of this newsletter, and at http://www.ucstrategies.com and at the VoiceCon conferences. We’re interested in your thoughts about this new newsletter—what we’re covering, what you’d like us to cover and your thoughts about Unified Communications. Just drop me a note at jburton@ucstrategies.com.

Jim Burton
Principal, UC Strategies
Founder/CEO, CT-Link
http://ctlink.com/

Posted in Architecture, Market Trends, Applications, Tech Trends, Jim Burton, Unified Communications |

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