Editor's note: As part of an overhaul of VoiceCon eNews, our weekly email newsletter, we're folding our other text-based newsletter, VoiceCon UC eWeekly, into an expanded HTML newsletter that will give subscribers a quick, easy-to-read overview of all the most current content available under our VoiceCon and No Jitter brands. (We'll continue producing our Thursday No Jitter Weekly as a separate publication.) Starting this week, the UC eWeekly content, produced in partnership with UCStrategies.com, will appear each Wednesday on No Jitter.
It's certainly no secret that the enterprise communications industry is undergoing a transformation similar to the shift the computing and data processing industry underwent decades ago. Fundamentally, the shift is from vertical silos to horizontal layers. In the earlier, vertical model, a single supplier provided many of the components of a complete system; in the emerging horizontal model, many suppliers contribute components to a complete system solution, all working together through standards, open interfaces, APIs and partnership agreements.Probably the most important transformative ingredient is the emerging developer ecosystem that designs and brings to market innovative communications solutions for a broad variety of UC applications--both general-purpose and industry-specific. Much of this development will show up and pay off in the future, but we are putting in place today the architectures and components upon which these solutions will be built.
For example, verbal communications can be captured, stored, accessed and manipulated just like any other media or data stream. While that concept isn't new, the tools to really manipulate these files are now being refined. Placing a voice call is just a right-click away--just like launching an IM or sending an email. And it's peer-to-peer from your computer to mine. No PBX needed. A captured call-answering message can become an email attachment or, using speech recognition, converted to text and displayed. Similarly, a text-based message can be translated to speech, if that allows more convenient access.
All of this is bringing new suppliers to the marketplace. Microsoft and IBM jumped aggressively into this space to include communications functions in desktop and mobile applications. Cisco and NET entered with the goal of capturing and enhancing voice and video media streams that flow across the networks. Applications companies such as Salesforce.com and SAP are building UC functionality or APIs into their suites. Other companies who seek to expand their markets, such as Google and Amazon, are eyeing this space to bring new capabilities and delivery channels to the market. And, of course, the legacy telephony equipment suppliers, led by Avaya, Siemens, and Alcatel-Lucent have realigned their products and services around this emerging market.
There are new announcements every week, and this column will be reporting and analyzing them. We will also be previewing the UC topics that will be discussed and exhibited at VoiceCon San Francisco. So, watch this space! There is a lot going on, and more coming.
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