It was a big week--the mid-term election, the Giants winning the World Series, and Aastra’s analyst conference. While not as big as the other two, the Aastra analyst conference gave me a chance to hear about the company’s direction and roadmap. The good news is, there was lots of news to hear about. The bad news is, most of it is NDA and I can't share it yet. I can say that Aastra’s portfolio evolution will be based on open standards, the perception of "video as the main driver for companies to move to UC," mobility solutions as a key to the future success of UC, and SaaS.
What impressed me the most is that The company has been working to consolidate its multiple product lines and to provide products that can be sold globally, rather than on a per-region basis. It’s also revamping its sales approach in some regions, moving from a multitier distribution model to fewer tiers and working directly with resellers.
Aastra's recent wins and successes for its channel partners are based on several factors, including:
* Investment protection for customers and partners
* Access to the latest technologies using open standards
* Competent and efficient local organization with strong global support, which lets the company and its partners address specific local markets and needs.
If we played a drinking game where we took a drink every time the term "open" was used during the conference, we would have been extremely inebriated. Aastra does have a good openness story, providing native support for various protocols and interfaces, including IBM Sametime, Microsoft OCS R2, and Exchange 2010, as well as providing open endpoint devices. One of Aastra's strengths is its comprehensive endpoint device portfolio, and we got an early view of its new Microsoft Lync phones, which are optimized to work with the upcoming Microsoft Lync. However, I would have liked to have seen more integrations with third-party products and applications, demonstrating how open Aastra really is.
As I mentioned, much of what we heard was about Aastra’s roadmap and is under NDA, so I can't share too much, but expect to see lots of new announcements in the coming months.
