Over and over, the presenters are stressing business integration. From Avaya to IBM to Microsoft to Nortel, it’s the commonly stated direction of UC.
In one of the presentations yesterday, industry analyst Blair Pleasant laid out the four steps to UC nirvana (my words, not hers). They look something like the following:
1. IP communications (IP PBX, CTI)
2. Enhanced IP Communications (SIP ,interfaces, UM)
3. UC User Productivity (Presence, IM, Advanced mobility, Conferencing /Collaboration, Advanced routing rules)
4. UC Business Process (Integrating with Business processes, CEBP, Enabling vertical and horizontal apps)
Here’s the key: as you go down the list, you start adding more value. The lesson I took away was that many customers are somewhere a long that continuum. You need to understand where they are and approach them from that angle. I’ve said this before, but MS is really capable of going from 4, 3, 2, 1 and Cisco et al really go from 1, 2, 3, 4. It’s a race to see who can run the table, just starting from different places.
Now what is clear is that it’s all about software. Every presenter has talked about the major shift from hardware to software. And it’s all about making the pieces work together. While it’s called "VoiceCon," this conference this year should really be called "UC-Con". IP Telephony, VoIP, hardware – all those barely get a mention.
The two keynote speakers yesterday, one from Avaya and one from Microsoft, went to great lengths to elaborate on the business-centric, user-centric model of communications. They were generally singing from the same hymn book the whole way.
However, Charles Giancarlo, Avaya’s CEO, did strike a discordant note when he put up a slide with big bold letters saying that Avaya’s goal was "To be the #1 Supplier of Enterprise Communications Systems". It seemed so old-timey, like "we want to be the world’s #1 supplier of hand towels". As if they manufacture the gear and supply it to you and then walk away. Because, from what I have seen from Avaya on the tradefloor and in most of the presentations, they are better than just a supplier. The have some great, innovative ways to hook into business processes. Dunno – maybe I’m reading too much into it, but that really stuck with me as anti-thetical to what UC is all about. It’s not about supplying the customer with a product. To be fair to Mr. Giancarlo, the bulk of his presentation was about business processes and was pretty much in harmony with the rest of the conference. But, when that’s your publicly stated goal is to supply systems… I think that maybe that could use a little tweaking more in line with what Avaya is capable of doing.
