A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies

This week’s issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by BCR Training:

“Planning and Implementing VOIP Unified Communications,” a two-day workshop presented by BCR Training and Marty Parker, Principal Consultant, Communication Perspectives, will enable you to build a strategic plan and presents the options available from all the vendors. Classes are April 23-24 in Oak Brook, IL, and June 4-5 in New York. For complete course outline and registration details, go to http://www.bcrtraining.com/course-info/ucv.php

“Convergence” has been communications’ Holy Grail for as long as I can remember. The reasons for its appeal are readily apparent: More streamlined infrastructure, fewer moving parts, less finger-pointing…the list is lengthy.

But all progress comes at a price, and convergence’s may be a winnowing of vendors and therefore a lessening of competition. I’ve heard cynics suggest that’s not a bad thing, that in this instance, less may turn out to be more. Perhaps, but if history is any guide, the most potent effects from reduced competition are higher prices and less innovation. That’s not my idea of Nirvana and my guess is that it isn’t yours either.

I’ve been thinking about the health of competition, because Unified Communications is pushing our industry toward a showdown. And I’m not alone, as evidenced by a recent article in Network World, penned by noted industry analyst and BCR columnist Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp.

In an analysis of Cisco’s acquisition of WebEx, Nolle highlights the coming market battle between the networking vendors, particularly Cisco, and those coming from software/IT, noticeably IBM and Microsoft. Nolle writes, “The service-oriented architecture (SOA) wave is a major problem for Cisco and other enterprise network players, because it threatens to suck differentiating features, such as security and application management, out of the network and into the IT software tools. It’s been hard for Cisco to counter what is clearly an application software trend, so it’s settled on the idea of ceding SOA to the IBMs and Microsofts of the world, and keeping another application-collaboration-for itself. But Microsoft and IBM also are nibbling at what they call unified communications, which is threatening Cisco’s collaboration strategy. And WebEx is all about collaboration.”

Nolle continues, “For enterprise users, the [Cisco-WebEx] deal marks the end of an era of happy and peaceful coexistence between IT and network vendors. Users can expect increasingly competing strategies for application management, security, and even performance monitoring and access control. The pressure will be on users to take an IT-centric or network-centric vision of productivity enhancement-to buy into SOA or SONA. But which one? The IT and network groups are likely to offer different answers.” (Nolle’s entire article is available at: http://www.networkworld.com)

For now, the vendors in each group are downplaying the competitive nature of their relationships. During VoiceCon Orlando, for example, there were more than a few announcements about partnering between IBM or Microsoft on the one hand, and the IP-PBX equipment suppliers on the other. That was for public consumption. Privately, however, the strains and tensions between the groups were apparent, as each pressed us, as the VoiceCon producers, for a larger share of the conference agenda. Since this pressure came from both sides we must have been doing something right, but this is likely to heat up in the not-too-distant future.

Clearly the pressure will grow on traditional communications suppliers-Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, Siemens, NEC and others. In the January 07 issue of Business Communications Review, Brent Kelly (Wainhouse Research), reported survey results that showed that Microsoft and IBM are likely to have considerable success leveraging their installed base of SameTime and LCS customers for Unified Communications. (Brent’s article can be found at http://www.bcr.com).

And IBM and Microsoft aren’t the only folks who could use UC as a wedge technology. Oracle is ramping up its speech/voice/messaging-related capabilities, Adobe is reportedly hiring folks with backgrounds in SIP and voice, and SAP and Salesforce.com are integrating communications functions into their product offerings. Yahoo! and Google have made moves that suggest that they will be doing more in communications than ever before, and even if their initial foray is in the consumer/SMB markets, they’re not likely to ignore the enterprise forever.

Will UC customers push for open standards and gravitate toward best-of-breed solutions? Or will proprietary solutions-and long-term relationships-win the day? The game is on, and there’s a lot at stake for both customers and their suppliers.

What do you think? Drop me a note at fknight@cmp.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum.

Fred Knight
GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Publisher, Business Communications Review

Posted in Equipment, Fred Knight, Market Trends, Standards, Unified Communications |

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