OK, Gartner’s UC Magic Quadrant is out!  Yippee!!????  I’m not even going to start talking about the wisdom of their placements – not going there.  But I do have to talk about what seems like a real “duh!” concept that came with the Quadrant.  According to a recent article in SearchUnifiedCommunications, “Interoperability is the magic word for vendors in Gartner’s unified communications (UC) Magic Quadrant this year, as market giants accept they have to let third-party developers play in their sandboxes.” 

Have I missed something or has “interoperability” been one of the key points of “CTI”, “Convergence” and now “Unified Communications”?  Isn’t that a major part of why traditional telecom manufacturers resisted this whole voice/data convergence thing from the beginning – because much of their success, and the success of their partners, was built on the concept of “proprietary architecture”?  Of course I can understand why the larger players like Avaya, Cisco, Siemens, NEC, Microsoft, etc. wouldn’t want to give up their hold on the end-user.  But I tend to be on the side of that end-user and have always believed that a “best of breed” solution was more to the end-user’s benefit than a solution built on proprietary architecture.

 I also believe, based on my own experience as a systems integrator, that interoperability is extremely beneficial for the VAR/Integrator/Interconnect.  Versus “proprietary”, interoperability leads to a better position when approaching customers…. “My company isn’t going to force fit your needs into a proprietary solution.  From best of breed products we’re going to build a solution to fit your specific business needs.”  And guess what? There’s good margin in ID’ing business needs, designing a solution to address those needs and implementing that solution.  And this doesn’t even begin to address the potential on-going customer relationship, as the VAR/Integrator/Interconnect (“Solutions Integrator”) is able to more readily meet the changing needs of that customer via the option to create more solutions with other best of breed products.  Wow! 

So to the “interoperability” suggestion from Gartner, I still say “Duh!” 

Tags: Unified Communications by Pam Avila
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I’ll join in on the year-end roundup – it was a great year for the unified communications market and we’ve made a lot of headway. Here are some of the year’s highlights, and my expectations for next year in the unified communications world – in no particular order.

1.    The economy - Of course the economy is the biggest news of the year. Enterprise customers are unsure what the fallout of the recession will be and are still not sure how UC fits into their environments. Some UC purchases have been put on hold, and many companies are now taking a wait and see attitude.

2.    Software as a Service – The only bright side about the lousy economy is that it might encourage companies to consider these alternative ways of reaping the benefits of UC without the capital expenditures. We’ve started seeing more companies – both large and small, evaluating Software as a Service offerings for UC in 2008. Cisco is well positioned for SaaS, of course, based on its WebEx acquisition, but other companies (like CommuniGate) will benefit as well in 2009 and beyond.

3.    Partnerships and alliances – vendors are starting to work together and we’re even making headway toward UC interoperability and federation. IBM and Microsoft are working together and making progress in terms of interoperability testing, and I expect to see more interoperability announcements between all of the major players in the coming months.

4.    Increasing number of UC implementations and case studies – while the market is still relatively small, 2008 was the year for real UC implementations, for both UC-User (for user productivity) and UC-Business Process projects.

5.    Social networking/social software has become huge, both in the consumer world and within the enterprise. New enterprise-grade social networking projects are being developed and announced, and are beginning to integrate with UC. Expect to see forms of “click to call” from some of the leading social networking sites, and especially from corporate social networking applications. Virtual worlds are also becoming more “mainstream” for the enterprise, as evidenced by Nortel’s Web.Alive.

6.    Mergers and acquisitions - Cisco/PostPath/Jabber; Nortel/Pingtel/Diamondware; Gores Group/Siemens; Convergys/Intervoice; and Syntellect/Envox are just some of the relevant acquisitions of 2008. I expect Cisco and possibly other UC vendors to acquire a social software company in the coming months so that it will have a commercial product offering in this area (see above). Unfortunately, I also expect some UC companies to downsize and either close up shop or get acquired by former competitors.

7.    End user focus – from a purely UC perspective, we saw several companies focusing their UC efforts on the business user or end user, rather than the IT manager. Avaya, Cisco, NEC, Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, and others have introduced programs aimed at understanding end user needs and matching UC offerings to these needs. Line of business managers will be the key to UC success.

8.    Channel involvement - As evidenced from the UCStrategies UC Summit last June, resellers and system integrators are gearing up to sell and implement UC solutions. This requires knowledgeable and experienced partners who can work with not only the IT staff, but line of business people as well. New channel programs from Avaya and others demonstrate the commitment to help bring the channel up to speed in going beyond selling boxes to selling solutions to the end users and line of business managers.

We hope that in 2009 the UC market will continue to build on the momentum that started a couple years ago. Let’s hope that it’s a happy new year for all.

Tags: Unified Communications Information by Blair Pleasant
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2008 was the year of communications.  Unified communications became a reality, with products and solutions actually being deployed, to form a collaborative strategy within organizations.  Perhaps the need for cost efficiencies, combined with the plummeting economy, forced enterprises to rethink how they utilize their communications platforms to improve overall productivity within their organizations, and ultimately add to their bottom line.  While tools such as UM and e-mail have been deployed for quite some time now, the emergence of a more unified communications and collaborative strategy took shape.  The integration of telephony and presence features became much more critical to business processes. All of a sudden, there were so many modes of communications that calling someone on the phone really became secondary. Modes such as IM and SMS have become the way to have a conversation.

As the year comes to a close, what does 2009 hold in store for this industry?  With emerging technologies taking shape, business models changing, a new group of millennials coming into the workforce, the blending of personal and professional lifestyles, and a new president-elect, I think that despite the economy, we’re in for change.  Here are a few things that I think will happen in 2009 (in no particular ranking order-they’re all important):

1. The Unified communications market will consolidate-as the credit crisis continues, the financial viability of vendors will be challenged, those who don’t survive will simply get acquired in a rapid fire sale, or simply go away. 
2. Interoperability will happen-There’s no way around it, if UC is to succeed, vendors will need to interoperate and partner with other vendors, in order to drive UC adoption. Most enterprises will take a best of breed approach, simply because of existing, disparate technologies within the organization, which becomes expensive to rip out and replace.  2008 was a lot of talk about making it happen; 2009 will see it happen…really.  Vendors finally understand that this is not a one vendor-take-all space and will learn to guess what? Collaborate!
3. Customers will have the option of deploying UC and collaborative tools overall, in the Cloud, making for better resource efficiencies.  Although still a relatively nascent market, vendors will capitalize on this opportunity and make it enterprise ready.  Enterprises will evaluate any technology that can help to rationalize capex/opex.
4. Enterprise social networking will become a legitimate collaborative tool.  Look for Facebook and LinkedIn type enterprise applications take shape in order to enhance partner, supplier and customer relationships, while at the same time, securing an organization’s intellectual property.
5. SaaS will gain traction as enterprises, both big and small, look to reduce hardware investment and create efficiencies; market will move towards anything as-a-service.
6. Terms like software, hardware, and telephony will go away, making way for new terminology.

Although there are many things that MAY happen, I believe these WILL happen.  The market must go in this direction in order to further the value proposition of UC and collaboration in general.  The value and benefits will be hard for enterprises to ignore, even in this economy.  This is a good time for enterprises to take the time to re-evaluate their equipment, strategy and ultimately resources.  Automating many business processes and implementing productivity applications is key in this environment and vendors have a choice of solutions to choose from.

On that note, thank you for reading me, and providing feedback.  I’m very interested in reading what you think will happen in 2009, feedback is very much welcomed.  It’s been quite a year and glad to have been a part of it.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts and opinions with you in 2009, and wish all my readers a wonderful and prosperous New Year!

Tags: Mobile UC, Unified Communications, Unified Communications Information by Vanessa Alvarez
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