I was inspired to write this post by an excellent review of Microsoft’s new Office Communications Server (OCS) by Tom Keating over at TMCNet.

Communications technologies represent a market that’s rapidly expanding and diversifying. Microsoft is a major part of this market shift and is largely focused on collaboration and productivity of knowledge workers (via seamless video conferencing, voice conferencing, instant messaging, rich presence, etc.). There’s some VoIP there, but customers will value OCS insofar as it masks the complexity of communicating across a wide diversity of devices/technologies that users can use to communicate.

In contrast, telephony as a stand-alone silo is dying. PBXs (including soft PBXs that replicate PBX functionality in software) are valued primarily in terms of the reliability of their dial-tone, with some of them providing basic unified messaging and call-flow management capabilities. It’s a product category that’s becoming rapidly commoditized, which typically means ever diminishing margins, except for the strongest, best recognized brands (e.g., HP, IBM and Apple have managed to make it through the commoditization of the desktop computer, but dozens of other companies didn’t).

I just marvel at the white space opportunities that Microsoft is helping to create as the industry lurches towards the integration of business process and business communications. Microsoft is continuing to do what it does best, that is to deliver a platform on top of which its partners can create and add value.

I can’t wait to come to work tomorrow and to keep doing just that.

That’s my .02…Be careful out there!

Martin Suter
President