A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies

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Over the past two years, our industry has changed more rapidly that I ever imagined. Making these changes has required real courage by the vendor community, and I give them credit for having the wisdom to recognize and fortitude to implement the kinds of changes that are necessary for them to prosper and survive.

There’s been considerable positioning and repositioning in a short period of time. Both Microsoft and Cisco named major divisions/groups “Unified Communications,” and almost every other vendor has added UC to their product names and descriptions.

Vendors are engaging in two types of activities: Strategic acquisitions and positioning, and re-engineering their business models. Most vendors are hesitant to discuss the details of the latter, with the exception of Nortel, which is becoming a software and services company (eventually a systems integrator of sorts) as it partners with Microsoft. Other companies either haven’t reached a final decision on how they’ll re-engineer their businesses or they have but are keeping it quiet for now.

One way to gain insight into how companies are repositioning themselves—and thus analyze where the Unified Communications market is headed—is to look at recent merger and acquisition activities.

First, Microsoft acquired PlaceWare, a web conferencing vendor, followed by the acquisition of Groove, a collaboration vendor, setting the stage for Office Live Meeting. Then, and here’s the biggie, Microsoft acquired a small Swiss company, mediastreams, which provides critical call control capabilities, and which laid the foundation for Live Communication Server and Office Communication Server. Another telling acquisition (no pun intended) was Microsoft’s acquisition of TellMe, which provides a hosted platform that delivers speech-enabled services and applications. Most recently, Microsoft acquired Parlano, which provides persistent chat capabilities, an important part of web collaboration. Microsoft continues to partner with a wide range of IP-PBX vendors, but it also will offer products that directly compete against them.

During this same period of time, Cisco (which has been offering call control capabilities for years) acquired GeoTel, with CTI capabilities to link to other PBX platforms, and subsequently Latitude, a web conferencing company, which is now the basis of Cisco Unified MeetingPlace. More recently it acquired WebEx, which not only provides hosted web conferencing capabilities, but very cool collaborative tools as well, thus enabling Cisco to also get into the hosted services business.

IBM has taken a different approach; instead of doing acquisitions for call control, it is partnering with vendors such as Cisco, Avaya and other PBX suppliers. More important, at VoiceCon San Francisco, IBM announced an even closer relationship with Siemens in which OpenScape’s interoperability with other PBXs will be bundled into Sametime. IBM also has been busy in the acquisition business, most recently acquiring WebDialogs, giving IBM an important entrée into the services side of web conferencing, which puts them head-to-head with Cisco’s WebEx acquisition.

When you add it up, here’s what you get so far:

• Three acquisitions centered on hosted UC services—Microsoft/TellMe, Cisco/WebEx, IBM/WebDialogs.
• Even more acquisitions revolving around web conferencing and collaboration—Microsoft’s PlaceWare, Groove, Parlano acquisitions, Cisco’s Latitude and WebEx acquisitions, and IBM’s WebDialogs acquisition.
• Everyone has cautious partnerships with the PBX suppliers, and sometimes the relationships are much stronger—e.g., IBM/Siemens and Microsoft/Nortel.

As UC vendors’ buying sprees show us which pieces of the UC puzzle they’re hoping to provide, and how they’ll be positioning themselves. Mobility is starting to heat up, per Avaya’s acquisition of Traverse and Cisco’s acquisition of Orative, both providing mobile clients for UC. You also should watch for more acquisitions in hosted services, social networking, and IM/presence federation. Stay tuned.

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

Jim Burton
CT-Link and UCStrategies.com

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

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