Well, it’s still Winter outside in Toronto, but it was Unified Communications “Spring” at the UC Road Show there.  Toronto really reflects the business climate of Canada.  While Canada is so big that there’s really no way to sum it up in one place, Toronto is a financial center and is the headquarters location for many major Canadian companies.  

The financial crisis is palpable in Toronto, with businesses concerned about revenue declines and consumers and government concerned about the financial markets and mortgage availability.  So, the theme of “Cost and Resource Savings through Unified Communications” was right on target.

The companies in attendance were diverse, but all had important interests in UC opportunities.   An educational course hosting company was interested in how UC might be used to enhance both operations and curriculum delivery.   A major cement and aggregate company was looking to get another notch of productivity in their highly competitive industry (though it was interesting to learn that some of their remote cement mine sites can’t even get a phone line to the property and are way out of cell tower range - not very likely UC sites).  A financial information service firm is about to move to new quarters and was looking for the best office and communications suite for their new facility.   A multi-national, multiple product line insurance company was looking to converge the multiple e-mail and communications environments that had accumulated over the years through mergers and acquisitions.

Quite a diverse set of needs, seems to me.  Yet each company found some aspect of the Microsoft UC Suite that interested them.  Some liked the rich APIs that would enable links into their business processes.  Some could see the immediate value of bringing audio, web and video in-house on a single, economical platform as an immediate cost savings, which could then be linked into SharePoint for enhanced collaboration.  Some liked the linkages and integrations with Microsoft Exchange e-mail so that users had as seamless an experience as possible in their daily tasks.  

Also, most attendees seemed to value the extensibility of the Office Communications Server software; once they had justified the installation with one of the applications mentioned above, the expansion to other areas, such as mobility or enterprise voice communications, was essentially a process of training and perhaps some added serve capacity, but not a new software kit with new or additional or upgraded licensing. 

So, the Toronto event lived up to my expectations.   Got to meet friendly Canadian business people who are intent on advancing their businesses in very pragmatic ways.   I would expect to hear about some new OCS applications or case studies from this group in the not-distant future.

Tags: Unified Communications Information //