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As we come to the end of the calendar year we will see many newspapers, magazines, and, of course, blogs running Top 10 lists for the first decade of the century in a particular field or market. So why make an exception? I present my list of the Top 10 events in the enterprise communications market during the past decade.

For an event to make the list it must have, in retrospect, been a milestone that changed market dynamics or was an industry first with reverberations for years to come. I am sure that most readers will concur with some events in my list and disagree with others. I welcome comments from readers to suggest their candidates for the list.

In chronological order:

1.) 2000: Cisco Systems introduces CallManager Release 3.0
This was the first release of the product that reflected Cisco's input following the acquisition of Selsius Systems in late 1998. Release 3.0 featured increased system scalability and redundancy. A new 7935 Media Convergence Server was introduced as the key element of a new clustered system design. Cisco's new 7900 IP telephone models were the first modern-day desktop instruments that were more than modified versions of older-generation digital telephone instruments (like its Intecom ITE-based predecessors). The Cisco 7900 series phones were characterized by a large display area and softkey feature implementation instead of programmable keys (XML browser capability would be added a year later). Cisco also introduced new media gateways that were a major step forward in design and function compared to the almost laughable original Selsius Systems equipment.

The IP telephony era had officially arrived and Cisco leveraged the updated design to totally upset the competitive equilibrium of the market.

2.) 2000: Lucent Divests Business Communications Systems (BCS) Unit: Avaya is Born
Six years earlier, AT&T divested its telecommunications equipment operations, both carrier and enterprise, to create Lucent Technologies. Several years later, the powers that be at Lucent decided that it should focus its resources on its carrier equipment business, and spun off the enterprise business unit as a new corporation known as Avaya.

The BCS unit was always treated like a stepchild in its days under AT&T and Lucent, mostly because its revenues and profits paled in comparison to those of other business operations; the enterprise communications business was never a preoccupation of top management.

The divestiture was the best thing to happen to the business unit, because it allowed the newly-formed company to focus on the enterprise market without battling for corporate resources or the attention of executive management. If BCS had remained with Lucent, it would also have gone down with the rest of the ship, up to the point where Lucent "merged" with Alcatel several years later. Instead, almost 10 years later, Avaya remains a market leader while a significant number of Lucent employees were terminated before and after the Alcatel deal.

3.) 2001: Mobile Extensions behind the PBX
The introduction of the Ericsson Mobile Enterprise Communication System and Avaya EC 500 Extension-to-Cellular options may have been the beginning of the end of the age of PBX desktop telephone instruments, though we didn't know it at the time.

The Ericsson and Avaya options allowed a station user to use a cellular handset as an extension behind their premises PBX system for one-number service, abbreviated intercom dialing, calling name/number display, and single voicemail box functionality. Calls were not forwarded, as was the previous custom, but effectively bridged between the desktop instrument and mobile handset.

Though the first cellular extension options were hardware-dependent, the basic option today can be implemented without additional server or circuit card equipment. During the past few years, GUI client options for smartphones have greatly increased feature functionality and user productivity.

Although most PBX station users still have a desktop telephone, the number of system calls placed or received from a mobile communications device is growing at an accelerating rate; dual-mode cellular/WLAN devices help minimize air time charges from the cellular services provider. The increasingly mobile nature of the current-day enterprise communications user threatens the existence of desktop telephone instruments, though it will still be many years before they are whisked off to a museum display.

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