In the comments to Zeus's Lotusphere post, Paul Lopez of NEC weighs in with some really excellent points (the emphasis is added):
I agree the collaboration vision described here is most definitely a software integration business model. While I like what IBM did with LinkedIn, many other companies have integrated Web 2.0 applications into mainstream software. For example Xobni added LinkedIn support for their MS Outlook plug-in last year. If you think about it, the software industry itself is even more commoditized than telephony. Most everything is free, open source and vulnerable. The challenge will be deciding promising software widgets to support, like Yammer versus Twitter for example. While Twitter is free and can be hacked, Yammer is a fee-based model tailored to the enterprise offering a little better security. The younger generation prefers asynchronous communication like IM, texting and Facebook and we can save a lot of background time using these tools. High value relationships are always built on synchronous communication--talking and listening, where the quality of service is important. I usually hear "let me call you on a land line" more often than "please bear with me while I'm bringing up this application." Strong industry players will adapt to what customers are buying, they always do.
The first point about software being commoditized: It's true, but there's software and then there's software, as Paul notes by differentiating "telephony" from software. The communications business may be migrating to a software model--where things can happen like 3Com or Nortel software running on IBM System i servers, or Avaya can run its Communications Manager software on HP ProCurve gear, as was announced this week. That will make communications cheaper than it used to be when it was essentially all hardware-based; but complex software that controls complex communications processes and sessions for tens of thousands of users simultaneously will probably never be cheap.
But I agree with Paul's larger point, that once you open communications up to a true software model, you start allowing the forces that have commoditized less-demanding software applications to bear on enterprise communications systems. And that's a good thing.
Paul's other point goes to the value of voice--which, incidentally, may be morphing into the value of video. It's all about call and response. I know there were people who were put off by Dr. Joseph Lowery's benediction at the presidential inauguration last week, but I thought
a.) it was funny, and the value of humor in prayer is underestimated; and
b.) the really powerful part came at the very end, the "say amens." Seeing a million or so people shouting "Amen" at the end of that ceremony really put an exclamation point on it.
That was synchronous communication.
In case you haven't seen it, here's the Lowery benediction:
