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

Being on the leading edge of an emerging market is a great place to be, but creating visibility as a market and thought leader is a challenge. This is especially true in a rapidly emerging field like unified communications (UC) and communications-enabled business process (CEBP) where the noise floor created by the 800 lb gorillas is absolutely deafening.

Gartner Group is a firm that has built a huge amount of credibility and cachet over the years, largely on the back of the “Magic Quadrant” and its “Technology Hype Curve”, both of which are approaches that I find very useful, and which I have used on many occasions. Unfortunately, a relationship with Gartner requires deep pockets and discretionary funds, and for a growing company, like Objectworld, most of its cash flow goes back into R&D and in growing a support organization. But as I was reviewing the Microsoft UC presentations from the OCS launch, I was excited most by two analyst quotes. First, from Gartner Group:

“Through 2010, 80% of businesses that have deployed communications enabled business processes will obtain significant competitive and revenue differentiation because of it.” (Gartner 2007)

Reading on, IDC is quoted as suggesting that:

“It (UC) will define the next decade of the entire IT and communications industry” (IDC 2007)

Wow.

Objectworld has been proselytizing the business value inherent in the automation of processes, in the value of placing synchronous communications in context, in order to increase workforce effectiveness while lowering operational costs. Objectworld has known for years that UC is revolutionizing the way that people communicate and the way companies do business. Objectworld’s customers know this and for many, is their best kept secret, their competitive advantage.

To start the year knowing that you are at the intersection of a major market shift is exhilarating, but getting heard above the noise floor is our biggest challenge. You can help by telling two friends about this ISV that has delivered a software-only, out-of-the-box CEBP solution for years now, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on…

Happy New Year – and be careful out there!

Martin Suter

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.

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

At its core, SIP is quite SIMPLE (sorry for the pun), which is why you get a book called SIP Communications for Dummies (supplied for free by SIP-friendly Avaya), freely download the actual standards from the IETF, and start developing using a number of free tools or commercial platforms, and to just get going. The SIP protocol is much like HTTP. At its base is a simple protocol, one that will evolve over time with extensions that meet real new needs. Tim Berners-Lee didn’t expect eBay, YouTube, Google and FaceBook to run over HTTP, but they do, as do billions of financial transactions and they all run over what is essentially still his original simple invention, HTTP, using open standards. HTTP itself is the agreed-to plumbing, modified and enhanced over time as new applications and requirements emerge. Whether the application is served by IIS or Apache, pulls data from Oracle or SQL Server; whether the application is presented on Firefox, IE, or Safari; whether it is rendered using .NET, PHP, ASP, Ajax or DHTML, all recent complex additions, they are all delivered over HTTP. Version 1.1 is still supported, if your needs are simple (no pun). It works.

Meanwhile you can’t even begin to look at ITU standards unless you’re in a very exclusive club. A print (print!) copy of the ITU.325 standard, like all ITU standards, requires paying a hefty fee with many zeros, and the tools needed to develop and test against it all require tools that have costs with even more zeros. The main reason why applications never prospered on ITU platforms is because nobody could ever do it easily and cheaply even for basic functionality. If you can’t do the basics easily how can anyone do anything useful?

Like HTTP, SIP began as a protocol to be developed and delivered on point platforms. In the mid-90’s there were as many variants of web server platform as there were web clients. Those days are long over, and those days are rapidly ending for SIP, especially in the enterprise.

There is no value in the plumbing and the protocol itself, because that comes with the platform. Open standards allow for true commoditization and costs rapidly drop to zero. Whether you choose Microsoft or Avaya, IBM or Oracle, you are buying into an ecosystem that offers as much richness as .NET, PHP, JAVA or Silverlight offer for the Web. Likewise, because these applications are SIP at their core, there will be interoperability between ecosystems, the only difference being how the application is rendered, and expectations will be the same on the client side regardless of where the application comes from.

Interconnection, interoperability and transparency between application ecosystems are paramount, and like the web, the real business opportunity is to innovate on top of the protocol, not to compete or resist the disruption. There are tremendous commercial opportunities even for the telecoms vendors, if their DNA allowed them to evolve.

Communications becomes about the applications, the platforms and their surrounding ecosystems.

Communications is not about the plumbing and the protocols. Just as HTTP before it, SIP has won.

Michael Slavitch

Lead, Technology Initiatives

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

Who can blame them? Given that all of these vendors are competing head-to-head with Cisco, it makes sense that they would seek to align with Microsoft, the only other contender for the UC crown. This is further simplified by the fact that working with an ecosystem of partners is a Microsoft core competency and part of its DNA. None of these incumbents is able to generate enough momentum on its own to compete effectively with Cisco, so tucking in behind OCS helps reduce drag for a while. But their tanks are nearly empty and the real race is just getting started.

It’s difficult to imagine that the incumbents agree with Microsoft’s assertion that the PBX is dead or with Microsoft’s ads proclaiming that communications should be software. In fact, the vast majority of these announcements, white papers and other marketing pieces from legacy vendors are mostly about trying to plug a traditional PBX system into the Microsoft data center, which is the right place for real unified communications. Just consider what the Microsoft platform provides: a ubiquitous platform that emphasizes user-centric and self-service approaches to driving workforce productivity, administration tools like Active Directory, security, reliability and scalability, connection to corporate data through ODBC, a huge network of Solution Providers, and a lot more. Office Communications Server ups that ante even further with instant messaging, enterprise voice capabilities, video conferencing and more. But how many vendors are really capitalizing on the platform or simply paying it lip service?

What these vendors are offering as “unified communications” is really no different from what they’ve offered in the past: a traditional PBX that stands outside of the data center with some basic convergence wrapping.

That’s my $.02. Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Martin Suter
President

PS — Be careful out there.

What I find fascinating is to contemplate the parallels between the business intelligence and unified communications markets. Flashback to early 2003, with Microsoft’s announcement that Yukon (SQL Server 2003) would deliver native BI functionality, the market predicted the demise of the standalone BI vendors, companies like Cognos, Business Objects, Hyperion, Crystal and others.

Microsoft’s entrée into the space created confusion across the Incumbents and in the marketplace. But as partners analyzed and customers digested, Darwin took over. There was consolidation in the space, as smaller, niche companies were picked up by larger players to help round out their own solutions, but more importantly, the successful companies evolved.

The leading companies, like Cognos, recognized that there was no longer money to be made in selling BI plumbing, and they migrated up to fixtures (i.e. applications). As people came to understand, it wasn’t BI that was compelling, it was the application of BI in a business context that was exciting. And so, business intelligence morphed into business performance management (BPM).

What can we learn?

I believe that unified communications is now on a similar path. Microsoft and Cisco will combine to make the market and bring it into the mainstream – quickly. However, people will fast realize that the plumbing is of declining value/interest. Why would a customer pay for basic telephony when Microsoft is essentially giving it away for free? And so, just as BI became BPM, UC will become CEBP (communications-enabled business process). With Microsoft’s help, people will quickly learn that it is the application of UC in a business context that is interesting, not UC itself, and the vendors that win will be those that deliver on this.

That’s my .02!

Martin Suter
President

PS – Be careful out there.

I’ve been fortunate, throughout my career, to have been at the forefront of several major market disruptions, yet am amazed at how quickly the buzz around “unified communications” has become part of the technology landscape. Yet, in many ways, the number of voices talking “UC” has only served to raise the noise floor and to make it difficult for the market to get anything resembling a clear signal.

So, what’s this blog all about? I started it because I wanted to help potential customers, partners, analysts and the press understand Objectworld’s take on unified communications. Unified communications, around here at least, refers to software that employees use to improve the way businesses communicate and their employees collaborate. It’s the “what next?” after convergence, and it’s about helping employees to be more productive and helping businesses put customer responsiveness front and center.

In order to keep things interesting, I’m going to try to mix things up with at least three of us blogging regularly, although I also hope to have guest bloggers from time to time. My posts will offer a macro -level, opinionated (and I hope, insightful) commentary on industry trends.

Michael Slavitch, Objectworld’s lead technology analyst will be blogging on some of the key technical distinctions across competing approaches to UC. And in his blogs, Jeff Wissing, Objectworld’s Director of Product Management and Systems Engineering will focus on the “how-to” and practical approaches to getting the most out of a unified communications deployment.

Objectworld Unified Communications Server is really a tremendous product (that’s not marketing — that’s the truth!). If you want, you can learn more about it here. In the meantime, I promise to try to keep things topical and interesting (and keep the marketing to a minimum) but I will reserve the right to brag every once in a while.

Thanks for reading, and be careful out there!

Martin Suter
President