Hi! I’m Jeff Wissing, Director of Product Management and Systems Engineering at Objectworld. In this role, one of the key success factors for me is to have my feet firmly planted between two paradigms, communications and applications, a position with which I’m very comfortable. Over the years, these have been branded many different things, but it’s called something different now – “Unified Communications”.

The announcement of ‘Big Blue’-squared forming an alliance (see IBM, Nortel Join Forces on Unified Communications) to deliver SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) clearly shows a market in transition. It’s about the applications and I couldn’t agree more. The communications element is considered table stakes, but the real gains in productivity and ROI reside up the stack in the applications that are built on top of a communications infrastructure.

But let’s face it; SOA comes with a big price tag, typically with a multi-tier architecture (i.e. multiple servers) requiring loads of professional services by specialized organizations that cater primarily to the Fortune 1000.

This is not to marginalize SOA, rather the opposite. The concept of SOA as it applies to Communications Enabled Business Process (CEBP) is very powerful. But I think it falls short because of the heavy lifting that is associated with SOA and that it fails to enable the average IT department to leverage its potential. Companies that wish to do the work themselves must have development personnel on staff in addition to IT staff, which really means that, for most companies, it ends up being a custom SI engagement.

Let me give you an example of how IT departments leverage Objectworld UC Server’s application environment to provide value added services today. I’ll start with a very simple example so as not to disclose too much of its capabilities out of the gate. But I promise that I’ll build on this in the next coming weeks.

Let’s take a simple example of a personalized “find-me/follow-me” type of service that allows end-users to automatically route selected incoming calls from callers they deem important (customers, partners, family members, boss, etc.) based on a caller’s telephone number (Outlook contact matching) and give non-matching callers the opportunity to press one to transfer to the user’s cellular telephone number. Naturally, if a caller leaves a message, the unified inbox will deliver the message to Microsoft Exchange and accompanying smart phones (Outlook Mobile or RIM’s BlackBerry devices).

Here is how you build it. Create a new service. Drag elements onto the canvas and arrange them in a particular way that adds value to an incoming caller. The elements are simple to understand with all the information, decision points and options presented in a simple and easy-to-understand user interface. The following elements will be used to build the service:

• Flow control – The ability to choose someone from your personal contacts and route the call based on a callers calling line ID (business phone, cell phone, home phone) accordingly. Assisted Transfer – the enabler for find me-follow me – an element that manages a supervised transfer (keeps hold of the call). If the transfer recipient does not answer the call, the call will be pulled back and will allow the caller to leave a message.
• Voicemail element – a typically answering behavior when a caller does not answer their telephone. The voicemail element allows the DTMF tones to be captured.

• If a user presses 1 on their key pad the element will be looped back to the assisted transfer element.

• Play Announcement – plays audio to the caller
• Take message – allow the caller to leave a message

Here is the final product.

It’s just that easy! Now try that with your existing phone system and SOA.

Stay tuned for more over the next coming weeks.

Some days I feel old. I can still remember getting excited about the move up to an IBM Selectric (with AutoCorrect!) from my first Brother manual typewriter. I remember standing in line at school in 1980 to run my punch cards through the reader and being handed inches of paper to parse through. I remember receiving my first fax, a handwritten letter from my father, and being blown away. None of these were seminal moments, except perhaps for me personally, but then as I began my career in technology, I’ve been fortunate to be on the bleeding edge of some major disruptions.

The first time I experienced the Web, with Netscape Navigator 1.0, was one of those moments. “How can you build a business model on ‘free’?” was a question that most of us in application software were asking ourselves when Navigator shipped, but then Google figured it out, in spades. The first time I heard Scott McNealy describe how the network is the computer in 1995, and I spoke with James Gosling at the first JavaOne conference about the implications of Java were two of those moments. The first time that I spoke with Peter Stanforth in 1990 about the implications for wireless mesh networking was yet another.

But this week, I had a doozy. In fact, I would dare label it an epiphany. But you’ll have to read on to find out what it is.

In 1996, Sun brought a guest speaker into its sales conference in Key West. Unfortunately, I can’t recall his name or title, but he was from a group within Nike that was focused on observing inner city kids, whom they considered to be the alpha trendsetters in fashion and function. The lesson I think we can all take away is that watching how kids use technology today can give us clues about what we (as mature, responsible adults) can expect to be doing in the future. Isn’t it amazing to watch people’s behaviors on planes? The first thing everyone does as soon as the plane lands is turn on their “cell phones” (multi-modal communicators would be more accurate), and begin texting. Irrespective of age, or the limitations imposed by SMS, “Generation Text” showed all of us that you can communicate effectively using a telephone keypad, abbreviations and your thumbs. Who would have thought that 30, 40 or 50-somethings would be typing away on their phones? In fact, I’m ROTFL just thinking about it.

I’m lucky to have two siblings in their early twenties to help me understand how to be relevant with my two teenage sons. I was introduced to Facebook in the early days by my kid brother and sister, and am amazed at what appears to be exponential growth. Notwithstanding the business model uncertainty, look at Facebook through the lens of a kid today. What is it?

Isn’t Facebook really the communications portal for kids today? I’m guessing most kids today have never used Outlook, and why would they?

Facebook contains their contacts, admittedly the “social” subset of what would be in my Outlook contact cards, but it is moving towards providing different views/access levels by categories. It offers “Presence”, rudimentary today, but that will change. Kids don’t use email anymore, they send Messages in Facebook. It’s similar to email but different, with real time notification (find me, follow me) and with the ability to respond via SMS. It has asynchronous chat via Wall postings and video communications (non-real time) through SuperWall. It allows me to stay on top of my communications via RSS feeds and SMS notifications.

Facebook is a social unified communications platform. Maybe this is what Microsoft saw when it recently made a half billion dollar investment in the company.

However, for all of its considerable strengths, Facebook’s biggest shortcoming today is real time, or synchronous communications, which is where my epiphany comes in.

Facebook should buy Skype.

Tomorrow.

I recently re-installed Skype (after taking a year break following the purchase of a new laptop), and am amazed at how it has stealthily and totally taken over my Web experience, including password protected applications like SharePoint. It’s not intrusive, it’s simply there. Everywhere. On every Web page with a phone number, Skype has found it, and turned that static number into an immediate click-to-call opportunity. Skype also has IM, Conference calling, Voice mail, Call forwarding. Now if you could tightly couple these features with the evolving capabilities of Facebook, what more would kids today need?

Email is dead.

Telephony is dead.

The transport layer is irrelevant.

Facebook + Skype is UC for Web 2.0.

Those of us who rely on UC today know that Facebook is not CEPB for the enterprise, but we can do much worse than to watch and learn from our kids.

That my .02! Be careful out there…

Martin Suter
President