As we wrap up the year, I thought I would blog on all the things, that when we look back on the year, that we would remember. There were many general news events such as the death of Michael Jackson, Bubble Boy, the USAir flight landing in the Hudson, but I'll try and stick to our industry :)* The economy changed IT and the nature of work. The economic situation we found ourselves in at the start of 2009 dominated conversations with IT executives and caused much of the consolidation we saw in our industry. The strong got stronger and the weak got weaker, creating some much needed industry consolidation. I think the impact of 2009 will be felt for years because it's changed the nature of work. Webinars, virtual seminars and other ways of working replaced travel and face to face meetings. An ROI of 12 months or less became the benchmark for IT project approval. Even if the economy improves, I think these things are here to stay and the lessons of 2009 will linger on for many years.
* The death of Nortel. I think everyone knew this day would come but watching the slow, methodical picking apart of the one time telecom giant was a truly sad, landmark event in tech--and it's not over yet. Only a decade ago, Nortel was one of the premier technology companies and the crown jewel of the Canadian tech landscape. The rapid demise of Nortel should remind us all that no matter how high our perch today, it can come crashing down almost instantaneously if a market transition is missed. As a Canadian, watching the Nortel garage sale take place was like watching part of my past disappear. Let's hope the buyers do more with the piece parts than Nortel was able to with the whole.
* HP buys 3Com. In many ways, the 3Com story is very similar to the Nortel one. There was a day, again about a decade ago, where 3Com, Nortel, Cabletron and Cisco were all about neck and neck as far as market leadership in networking goes. Then 3Com, for some strange reason, decided that consumer and SMB networking was a better place to be than the high margin, high value enterprise networking equipment and it went out and bought Palm and US Robotics. 3Com tried many times to re-enter the enterprise market and, while it had the product, it could never regain the mindshare it had. Falling into HP was one of the best things that could have happened to what's left of 3Com.
* Social media takes down Tiger Woods. The Tiger Woods news would normally fall into the "general" news that I said I would stay away from but I do think it's interesting that what did Tiger Woods in were things like text messages and pictures taken with camera phones. Just a few years ago, this could never have happened since these tools were not part of our everyday lives, but they are today. Social media tools will continue to evolve but remain a huge part of our every day lives and we will have the ability to share information, over any medium, faster and faster. What happened to Tiger should be taken as a lesson to all business leaders that workers need to be educated on all of the dos and don'ts associated with using social media as a corporate tool.
* Cisco enters the sever and email markets and changes its partner landscape. Cisco has a problem that any company would love to have. How does a company that's $40 billion in revenue, continue to grow at 15% when it owns almost all of the share in its primary market? The answer is to find other markets that are big enough to move the needle, even if that means partially stepping on your partners' toes, and that's what Cisco did in 2009. I think both sets of products; UCS and WebEx mail, have a legitimate shot at taking some serious share from the incumbent vendors because of market transitions. However, the disruption Cisco saw in its partner community will continue causing Cisco and its competitors to create new alliances.
* SIP Trunking became real. SIP Trunking is something that our industry has talked about over the years but 2009 was the first year that there was some significant customer interest. The main reason for this is that this is the first year that incumbent service providers have actually tried to sell it and have been talking to their customers about it, which creates awareness. It's typical telco mindset that any success of something new means cannibalization of the old thing, so the network operator does what they can to prevent people from buying the new thing, and SIP Trunking followed this path to a T. 2009 will be remembered as the year that SIP Trunking and Session Border Controllers became part our regular UC discussions.
