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Tuesday 16 October 2007, 2:04 PM
Unified comms fails to unify IP vendors
I've just attended one of the big debates of the IP'07 show: and one of the very biggest themes of the event is unified communications.
Unified comms involves bringing together voice, data, video and presence functionality, so a) everything happens over one network and b) you know where you contacts are.
The problem for IT professionals is every vendor has a different way of doing things: and they are starting, in gentle terms, to squabble about it.
In short, the PBX vendors believe they have a great proposition coming from the voice side of things. Microsoft believes it has a great proposition coming from the software side of things.
Put Microsoft, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco and Nortel in one room, and it all kicks off.
Cisco and Nortel are apparently partnering with Microsoft on unified comms, yet each wants to succeed in its own right.
All the equipment vendors believe the network is crucial to the success of UC; Microsoft does not.
The challenge for the vendors is to make sure their products are fully open, so IT professionals can pick equipment from one or several vendors as they choose.
The danger is, as found frequently in the technology sector, that if the vendors all pursue their own direction, then it'll be a lose-lose scenario.
Business customers will be locked into one vendor's solution out of necessity, and the vendors' sales will, as a result, suffer.
Let's hope the vendors get it together and produce open solutions that will really benefit business productivity.
PreviousComments on this post
One of the problems of the Microsoft Office Communications Client/Unified Server combo is that the presence features in Microsoft Office will only work with Unified Communications server. Its effectively trying to leverage its quasi monopoly on the desktop to force its way into the telephony market.
I believe Microsoft should open up its office presence interfaces - so that all telephony vendors can integrate with office and make this a win win for the end-user.
Nick Galea
3CX Ltd - www.3cx.com
Developers of software based IP PBX for Windows
Nick - how can I agree more? It's absolutely imperative we don't have vendor lock-in. Surely open interfaces will be welcomed by most IT professionals, allowing them to build communications based on the vendors' offerings they want to choose.
Certainly Microsoft is trying to force its way into the telephony market, and the PBX vendors are fighting back and pushing the other way. It will be fascinating to see who's going to win. A partnership maybe?
