The announcement of Office Communications Server (OCS) last month produced an impressive flurry of marketing activity around unified communications. Jumping on the bandwagon with announcements on “unified communications” products or a partnership with Microsoft is a group of highly unusual suspects. In order to avoid being tagged as “legacy” PBX vendors, many of these companies are scrambling to connect their telephony silos to the OCS power grid under the guise of unified communications.

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.

The news hit this week that IBM was making its largest acquisition ever – the $5 billion purchase of Cognos, another Ottawa-based company, and a pioneer in the area of business intelligence.

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’m proud to be able to officially launch Objectworld’s corporate blog. My goal is to keep it topical, timely and opinionated with a minimum of “marketing” content, as I’m confident that those of you interested in learning about Objectworld’s unified communications solutions for Microsoft-centric small and medium-sized businesses will be able to find it on our corporate site.

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