Microsoft's strategy in the market for business communications solutions has long been to deliver a software-based platform with a generic feature set that can appeal to a broad set of enterprises, mainly large ones requiring a voice and corporate instant messaging platform for thousands of users. The company has shied away from adding functionality that would allow it to aggressively market its unified communications solutions in specific vertical industries, such as healthcare, hospitality, education, or finance. With Microsoft positioning Office Communications Server, as well as the upcoming Communications Server "14" update, as full-fledged PBX alternatives, this lack of industry-specific functionality and marketing program could become increasingly problematic. After all, PBX developers have long actively sold into vertical markets by tailoring their telephony systems in ways that meet the communications needs of businesses and organizations in various industry verticals. In shying away, Microsoft risks conceding a significant number of accounts to its rivals.
But it's unfair to characterize Microsoft's UC products as entirely absent from vertical markets. Earlier this month at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, I attended a panel presented--oddly enough--by a number of Microsoft's worldwide partners. The topic was communications-enabled business processes (CEBP), but the panelists often referred to the vertical markets in which they are delivering OCS-based solutions. Danny Burlage, CTO at Netherlands-based Wortell, spoke of Special Portal for Special People, a solution developed for institutions providing care to the mentally disabled. Built on SharePoint and leveraging OCS for presence and communications, patients can check the availability of family members and legal guardians, allowing them to reach out and speak with them on a more regular basis than they previously could.
Evangelyze is also active in developing Microsoft-based communications solutions in the healthcare and higher education sectors. CEO Joe Schurman spoke a bit about the SmartCare remote diagnosis and SmartClass distance learning offerings, but spent more time introducing an OCS app store that Evangelyze is hoping to launch late this year.
And Khai Tran, CEO of Convergent, described a health care solution called Presence Integration Manager for Vocera. It integrates telephony presence with the Vocera communications badges that for the past several years have been deployed as alternative to telephones in hospitals. Based on the WiFi access point their badges are connected to, doctors and nurses have their location information made available to OCS which displays it, as well as on-hook/off-hook information, on Microsoft Office Communicator desktop clients. Vocera customers can also use the device's speech interface to check on Office Communicator users' status and set up calls with them. In addition to healthcare Convergent also targets higher education and public utilities, integrating OCS with existing applications and specific business processes.
At some point I'm guessing Microsoft will need to bring in-house at least some of the development of vertical solutions for its unified communications products. Perhaps to win the business of large healthcare institutions or governmental organizations unwilling to trust smaller and often regionally focused partner companies. But at this stage
