Having being involved with the introduction of digital switching and packet data networks, I guess that I qualify as the graybeard in the Objectworld team. Upstart, Objectworld set out in 2004 to be, somewhat immodestly perhaps, The IT Telephony Company™. The vision was to offer software that put the management of telephony into the IT info-structure of an enterprise. This concept has intrigued me since voice communications went digital.

The Objectworld objective is, working within the Microsoft ecosystem, to dramatically change the manner in which communications services are deployed by incorporating voice services alongside other IT services in the computing systems that support an enterprise. In 2007 this concept was given a big boost by the Microsoft introduction of OCS, and the large number of hardware vendors that collaborated in the venture. So today unified communications is the thing: every major PBX vendor trumpets the concept, and lots of other communications equipment vendors feature the values that they bring to the “UC” market. The result of this frenetic activity is a good deal of confusion: there is, however, conviction that there is a pony in there somewhere.

All the entrenched PBX vendors have been struggling with how to be profitable as they market IP based systems and the hardware becomes more of a commodity. The values of these newer systems lie in the merging of voice into the Internet and data world where the values of software based services dominate: so the established PBX guys are now setting their sights on being software vendors. The latest such move is on the part of the venerable Siemens corporation and the announcement of a unified communications software package. Interestingly, for Objectworld, the Siemens Web site highlights IT Telephony, and outlines the vision that Objectworld has implemented. See: http://enterprise.siemens.com/open/us/oucs/ittelephony/default.aspx

As Chairman of Objectworld’s Board of Directors, I am excited about what Objectworld is doing. Yes, Objectworld anticipated unified communications and aptly named its offering Objectworld Unified communication Server. But however good the product, getting the message out there in such a crowded space as UC has become is tough and I am encouraged that now one big guy has come out and actively supported the IT Telephony approach. I believe that Objectworld has a great chance to be the next Mitel (or, perhaps more correctly Cognos, since Objectworld is a software company) to emerge from the communications rich Ottawa community.

More on my reasons for that later.

Colin Beaumont