Lync, Flare, Quad--these were some of the big announcements of 2010 and, aside from being monosyllabic, they have a lot in common.
For those who have just spent the last few months living on a remote island, here’s the quick, summary version: Lync is Microsoft's latest version of OCS; Flare is a personal workspace with drag and drop communication services and information access that currently runs on Avaya's new desktop video device (aka tablet); and Quad is Cisco's social media tool for the enterprise. These products (Flare isn't really a product, it’s an "experience") epitomize some of the hot topics of 2010--the evolution of unified communications, tablets, and social media.
Tablets were big in 2010, and will be even bigger (not literally) in 2011, with more vendors introducing their own versions. Personally, I'm not sold on the idea of purpose-built tablets for video or collaboration such as Cisco’s Cius and Avaya's Desktop Video Device with the Flare Experience; I'm waiting to see some compelling use cases and customer examples before getting too excited about this. I expect that these video and collaboration devices will primarily be used in a few niche cases, while most organizations opt for the more "generic" tablets like the iPad.
That said, the impact of tablets is already being felt in the workplace. Some mobile workers can use these devices flexibly for quick demos, accessing corporate information, and more. At a recent conference I attended, many vendors opted for showing demos on their iPads rather than on their computers and flat screens, demonstrating the flexibility and mobile capabilities of their offerings.
Social media has become my favorite topic of late. Products like Cisco Quad, as well as the various contact center social media products, and the multitude of Enterprise 2.0 products and services, are making it easy to find people, connect with people, and share information. In 2010 we've seen the introduction or enhancement of social media offerings--including enterprise solutions like IBM Quickr and Connections, Microsoft SharePoint 2010, Salesforce Chatter, and offerings from Jive, Moxie, Socialtext, and many more, as well as customer care solutions like Cisco's SocialMiner, the Genesys Social Media Strategy, and Siemens' OpenScape Fusion.
The way we communicate for business has changed, with people sending direct Twitter messages and sharing links in Facebook rather than email. 2010 was an important year for social media, but 2011 will be the year when real-time communications becomes a more integral and integrated part of social media, enabling users to click-to-connect from within their social media and Enterprise 2.0 applications. Communities, activity streams, contacts, projects--all of these are being integrated to make it easier for workers to collaborate, with communication capabilities such as IM, posts, blogs and sharing of video and voice, as well as click-to-call or conference being added to the mix, from within a single user interface.
Lastly, the unified communications market continued to grow. In addition to what’s been discussed above, Alcatel-Lucent introduced a new architecture on a SIP core, there were enhancements to Avaya Aura, and virtualization of UC capabilities from Mitel, Siemens and others. We saw new hosted offerings from IBM, Cisco, Mitel, Microsoft, Interactive Intelligence, and others. In addition, a slew of smaller SaaS vendors started coming out of the woodwork.
This all means new options for customers, a variety of ways to consume UC capabilities (hosted, premise, or hybrid), and lower barriers to entry for companies of all sizes. 2010 was a great year for unified communications--and 2011 should be even better!
