UC Interoperability?
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
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This past Monday, my colleague Eric Krapf posted a story on our new website, NoJitter.com, that put a spotlight on a major challenge facing Unified Communications: Interoperability. Can UC break through and deliver real interoperability, and improve enterprise communications’ heretofore lousy track record?
Eric was covering a new application from Avaya “Specialist Connect for Retailers,” which was just announced in conjunction with Motorola at the National Retail Federation’s annual show in New York. Here are the basics of how it works: A thin client on a Motorola wireless device connects back to a server running the Avaya application, so when a salesperson scans a bar code on a product, up pops a screen on the Motorola device that lists people/locations within the company that can answer questions or be a resource about the product. (See the news story at www.nojitter.com.)
It’s a cool app, and one that is a logical variation of an important trend that Don Van Doren calls “company as contact center,” by which he means using communications and presence to get the customer connected to someone with the right skill set to help, no matter where the resource is located or what division within the company they report to. So far, so good.
The challenge Eric identifies in a follow-up blog to his news story, however, is openness…or more appropriately, the lack thereof. He notes, “…the Avaya application, called Specialist Connect for Retailers, only talks to Avaya’s Communications Manager IP-PBX.” You can find his blog entry at www.nojitter.com.
Eric theorizes that maybe Avaya’s idea is “to seed the market with applications they build in-house that work with their IP-PBXs, as a sort of proof-of-concept/proof of value, to encourage third-party developers to see this as a market worth pursuing….” That’s certainly a worthwhile objective, but the more long-term issue remains: To what extent will UC become more open than the communications capabilities that have preceded it?
The term “unified communications” suggests that there’ll be an easy flow from one device to another, one network to another, one app to another. But that’s a far cry from what have today. Even in the rare instances when an enterprise is running a single-vendor environment, interoperability isn’t easy to deliver. And, as we all know, the vast majority of enterprise communications takes place in multi-vendor environments, where suggestions of “seamless interoperability” evoke both laughter and tears. I don’t know anyone who believes that multi-vendor environments are going to disappear anytime soon.
This issue of interoperability extends far beyond Avaya or its most recent offering. The entire industry is struggling with this issue as evidenced by the growing concern about the lack of presence federation.
That’s why at VoiceCon Orlando 2008, we’re going to devote quite a few sessions to UC and to the opportunities and challenges enterprises and applications developers face as they seek to create new apps that ride over IP Telephony platforms and integrate communications into mainstream enterprise applications. Check out the VoiceCon agenda at www.voicecon.com/orlando/program.
Any new technology comes into the market accompanied by high expectations, and UC is no exception. During 2008 we’ll learn a lot about how far UC can move the industry toward achieving interoperability.
What do you think? Will UC deliver on interoperability? Share your thoughts here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum or drop me a note at fknight@cmp.com
Fred Knight
GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Publisher, NoJitter.com
Posted in Standards, Market Trends, Applications, Fred Knight, Unified Communications |
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