While everyone’s talking about the announcement made last week between Microsoft and Aspect Software, focusing on Microsoft’s investment in Aspect and the fact that Aspect will be integrating with and supporting Microsoft’s OCS, I think the most important piece of information is missing from the announcement. Ok, so it’s big news that Microsoft is investing a significant amount of money in Aspect, and it’s also important news that Aspect will integrate its Unified IP contact center solution with OCS to provide capabilities such as “ask-an-expert capabilities” (or what I’ve been calling Expert Agent capabilities) using OCS’s presence technology. This will certainly be useful to Aspect customers, and this helps clarify Aspect’s UC strategy. I see this announcement as being very beneficial to Aspect and its customers.
But what is missing from this announcement is information on Microsoft’s contact center strategy vis a vis UC. We still have not heard what Microsoft will offer in terms of a contact center solution as part of or in conjunction with its OCS offering. Clearly Microsoft recognizes how important it is to have some sort of contact center solution offering for customers that are looking into an enterprise UC/voice solution. But the company has not disclosed any sort of contact center strategy to date.
Microsoft has several options– clearly working with Nortel, a leader in the contact center space, to provide the needed contact center capabilities is one option (and while Microsoft made it clear that its investment in Aspect does not impact its relationship with Nortel, I’m sure the Nortel folks weren’t too excited when they heard the news).
Another option is to acquire a company in the contact center market, such as Aspect or possibly Interactive Intelligence. And of course rumors persist that Microsoft will acquire Siemens Enterprise Communications, Nortel, or any number of telephony vendors, which, if true, would provide Microsoft with the needed contact center capabilities and expertise. But these are rumors and so far no truth to any of them (yet).
The cynic in me believes that there’s a good chance that Microsoft will leverage both Nortel and Aspect’s expertise, and then offer its own contact center offering, competing with both companies (although less likely Aspect since they traditionally focus on high-end solutions).
Regardless of what route Microsoft takes, it’s important for the company to articulate its contact center strategy for those companies that are looking to OCS as an enterprise voice solution. Most of those companies also have contact centers and in many cases will be looking for a contact center solution down the road. Microsoft needs an answer for them.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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The 15-year old International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is an international community of companies working on promoting and facilitating the development and use of interoperable, real-time, multimedia telecommunications products and services based on open international standards. For those unfamiliar with IMTC their goals, per their web site are:

• To advocate the common interests of the industry through education and promotion.
• To be an unbiased source of information to end users, press, industry analysts, legislators, regulators and the industry.
• To identify obstacles to the growth and success of the industry and to implement or recommend solutions.
• To promote and facilitate interoperability testing of real-time, Multimedia Telecommunication products and services.
• To develop and advocate requirements to standards-making organizations.
• To provide opportunities for industry participants to meet, exchange ideas and information, and guide the future direction of the organization.

I met with the president of the organization, Anatoli Levine, From RADVISION, at VON this week and we talked about two of IMTC’s most recent focal points as being unified communications and content delivery. At the very beginning of this effort, IMTC’s goal is to create a reference architecture (although not the classical ‘reference architecture’ that engineers would think of, but rather a deployment blueprint for UC (however they refer to it as both). I was thrilled as this effort directly addresses one of the major hot points of UC and that is the difficulty we face in deploying UC solutions given the myriad vendors and products we have in this space.

The IMTC is set up so that a broad subject, such as unified communications, is a work group, with area or subject activity groups underneath. The Unified Communications Working Group, which is chaired by Shantanu Sarkar from Cisco, has four activity groups under it covering 3G-324M, conferencing interoperability, IMS, and SIP. Activity groups are open for unlimited participation from member companies, and as they eloquently said it on their web site “Activity Groups allow competing companies to conduct regular dialog regarding interoperability of their products and to develop a common stance enabling them to help shape and evolve industry-wide standards.” Yoo Hoo! I applaud these efforts.

In checking out their membership, they have quite a list including Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent, NMS Communications, Apple, Polycom, etc., but there are many I’d like to see including Microsoft, IBM, Nortel and all the other usual suspects. I encourage anyone involved in UC to participate and check the site regularly for updates as they move along.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Nancy Jamison
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