When it comes to business communications, Google has two distinct irons in the fire. The first takes the form of Google Apps for Work, making Hangouts a formal part of the suite, and leveraging partners like Switch, gUnify, and Esna to pair Google Apps with a full-featured UC service or solution. That was the topic of my panel at last week's Enterprise Connect conference, so you can either listen to the replay (attendees only) or check one of my previous blogs if this topic interests you.
Google's other iron in the UC fire involves Chrome appliances. It began quite unexpectedly a year ago in the video conferencing space, cropped up a couple months later as regards Web conferencing services, and came up again this week in relation to customer support solutions. So let's take a look at the various ways Chrome appliances are becoming relevant -- or at least more visible -- in the UC space.
(OK, yes. There's a third iron. But I'm not going to address WebRTC and VP8, so let's not extend the metaphor in that direction this time around.)
Chromeunications for Contact Centers
Avaya has emerged as the main mover and shaker promoting Chrome appliances in contact centers. It started late last year with the introduction of Avaya Agent for Chrome, an agent interface delivered as a Chrome application running on Chromebooks. The software has since become generally available, listing for $30 per agent per month. Avaya Agent for Chrome is initially a client only for Elite, Avaya's flagship solution for large-scale contact centers. But, as Gary Barnett, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Engagement Solutions, said at the recent Avaya partner conference, "that will expand over time." When that expansion might take place remains unclear, but this week's introduction of a second, more intricate Chrome-related contact center solution moves the Avaya-Google development work firmly beyond Elite.
Avaya has a rather convoluted set of cloud platforms and services, so let's contrast Customer Engagement OnAvaya Powered by Google Cloud Platform (Customer Engagement OnAvaya for the rest of this blog) to what the company is already delivering:
Like Avaya Agent for Chrome, the agent interface for Customer Engagement OnAvaya is a Web application running on a Chrome browser on Chromebooks. As such they both fit squarely into the larger trend of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in the contact center. The value proposition of leveraging thin clients in contact center environments has long been well understood: Terminals are less expensive and more secure than PCs, and thin client apps are easier to manage since they aren't installed on individual PCs. All this reduces the TCO of contact center solutions. Elite has long had a VDI client, but this marks the first time IP Office Contact Center has had one.
On a related note, VDI is no stranger to Chromebook. Last year both Citrix and VMWare introduced Chromebook support for their desktop virtualization software. The Avaya announcements build on this, making its agent apps available on Chromebooks that enterprises are already considering as thin client terminals.
Click to next page for a look at 'Chromeunication' of huddle rooms, Web conferencing, and more
Google's other iron in the UC fire involves Chrome appliances. It began quite unexpectedly a year ago in the video conferencing space, cropped up a couple months later as regards Web conferencing services, and came up again this week in relation to customer support solutions. So let's take a look at the various ways Chrome appliances are becoming relevant -- or at least more visible -- in the UC space.
(OK, yes. There's a third iron. But I'm not going to address WebRTC and VP8, so let's not extend the metaphor in that direction this time around.)
Chromeunications for Contact Centers
Avaya has emerged as the main mover and shaker promoting Chrome appliances in contact centers. It started late last year with the introduction of Avaya Agent for Chrome, an agent interface delivered as a Chrome application running on Chromebooks. The software has since become generally available, listing for $30 per agent per month. Avaya Agent for Chrome is initially a client only for Elite, Avaya's flagship solution for large-scale contact centers. But, as Gary Barnett, senior vice president and general manager of Avaya Engagement Solutions, said at the recent Avaya partner conference, "that will expand over time." When that expansion might take place remains unclear, but this week's introduction of a second, more intricate Chrome-related contact center solution moves the Avaya-Google development work firmly beyond Elite.
Avaya has a rather convoluted set of cloud platforms and services, so let's contrast Customer Engagement OnAvaya Powered by Google Cloud Platform (Customer Engagement OnAvaya for the rest of this blog) to what the company is already delivering:
Like Avaya Agent for Chrome, the agent interface for Customer Engagement OnAvaya is a Web application running on a Chrome browser on Chromebooks. As such they both fit squarely into the larger trend of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) in the contact center. The value proposition of leveraging thin clients in contact center environments has long been well understood: Terminals are less expensive and more secure than PCs, and thin client apps are easier to manage since they aren't installed on individual PCs. All this reduces the TCO of contact center solutions. Elite has long had a VDI client, but this marks the first time IP Office Contact Center has had one.
On a related note, VDI is no stranger to Chromebook. Last year both Citrix and VMWare introduced Chromebook support for their desktop virtualization software. The Avaya announcements build on this, making its agent apps available on Chromebooks that enterprises are already considering as thin client terminals.
Click to next page for a look at 'Chromeunication' of huddle rooms, Web conferencing, and more
Chromeunications for Huddle Rooms
Chromebox for Meetings set off a media firestorm, at least in the trade press, when Google announced early last year. Articles repeated many of the same facts: It's a video conferencing appliance for huddle rooms, developed and designed by Google with hardware delivered by partners, bring your own display, $999 price point plus $250 annual maintenance, immediate availability in the US with international sales to follow.
HP's plan to deliver a Chromebox for Meetings solution has apparently fizzled, but otherwise the rollout seems to have gone smoothly. Asus has a shipping product, and Dell stepped in with one as well. The solution is now available in Australia, Japan, and the UK, and there's some interesting indications of how it's being adopted domestically. The state of Iowa, for example, has bought 20 units, while Wyoming has deployed 60 to a combination of agencies and schools.
Let's look at Wyoming's Google implementation more closely. CIO Flint Waters, who's behind the Chromebox for Meetings implementation, spearheaded a transition to Google Apps for Government a few years back, making Wyoming first to adopt the online productivity apps statewide. And on a recent visit to Silicon Valley, Waters arranged for Wyoming's governor to test ride one of Google's driverless cars. I think this will be representative of a lot of Chromebox for Meeting sales, and probably Customer Engagement OnAvaya as well. Buyers will not necessarily be the IT administrators specifically in charge of purchasing traditional video conferencing and contact center solutions. Rather, buyers will be IT folks who have already opted for Google software and services and are open to making further IT purchases that leverage those investments.
Adoption mainly by Google Apps customers will necessarily limit the impact Chromebox for Meetings has on the market for video conferencing solutions. And its huddle room-specific application further forces it into a niche, preventing Google from having a greater impact in the market overall. That said, there's clear evidence that Chromebox for Meetings has shaken up video conferencing system developers' product development activities. RoundTable 100, which Polycom just announced, is a $1,000, easy-to-use video conferencing solution targeted at much the same sort of huddle room scenario as Chromebox for Meetings. And late last year Highfive, co-founded by a former Google product manager, introduced a huddle room solution that's positioned as a cheaper, easier, less Google-specific alternative to Chromebox for Meetings.
Chromeunications for Web Conferencing
Chrome appliances have been having decidedly less impact on Web conferencing services traditionally used for collaboration. At first glance, this seems surprising since the partnership Cisco announced with Google last year had the promise of WebEx running natively on Chromebooks as its centerpiece.
The partnership makes sense in a certain "the enemy of Microsoft is my friend" sort of way. But at the time Cisco announced the partnership Google Hangouts sorta kinda competed with WebEx. That is, Hangouts delivered a set of conferencing and communications features that end users could employ as an alternative to standard Web conferencing. But Hangouts wasn't officially part of the Google Apps for Work suite at that point.
Things became more complicated in the months that followed. Last summer Google made Hangouts a bona fide part of Google Apps for Work. This gives the apps suite a formal communications and collaboration component that Google supports and covers as part of the Google Apps for Work SLA, thus reducing subscribers' reliance on third-party collaboration services like WebEx. And Cisco added Collaboration Meeting Rooms to WebEx, which expands the video conferencing capabilities already inherent to WebEx and reduces WebEx users' need for third-party video conferencing services. Hangouts and WebEx still aren't head-to-head competitors. But they're clearly encroaching more, not less, into each other's territory.
Given this context, it's not overly surprising that while WebEx running natively on Chromebooks was initially hailed as opening WebEx to a quickly growing Chromebook market, a year later native integration remains commercially unavailable. I'm not sure when or even if Cisco plans to deliver it, or what other milestones the two companies have set for themselves as evidence that the partnership announced last year remains alive, active, and beneficial to customers.
Niche of a Niche
Generally speaking, I see these business communications solutions for Chromebox and especially Chromebook benefiting Google much more than UC vendors. Sure, Chrome-related announcements make great publicity for UC vendors. Google is well-known. Google is cool. Google is not Microsoft. Put Google on stage with your execs and your UC announcement commands much more media attention than it probably would otherwise, especially outside the trade press. But Google seems to have the most to gain in the long term.
Google, after all, is very eager to create new inroads into the enterprise market for its Chrome appliances. This is the driving force behind all the unexpected and unusual "Chromeunications" announcements of the past year. As one reporter concisely put it, "Although Google doesn't make Chromebooks, the company generates revenue licensing and IT administration software for the devices."
Customer Engagement OnAvaya has the added benefit of running Google's cloud computing platform, which brings the company further revenue. And if the Avaya service is successful it could lead to additional enterprise services being trusted to run on Google's PaaS. So for Google, contact center, Web conferencing, and video conferencing software running on its Chrome appliances is one part of a much larger strategy to firmly establish Chrome and Google Apps in the workplace.
But to what degree will UC and contact center solutions developers really benefit? And how much impact will the Chrome solutions have on enterprises? On the bright side, Chromebook sales increased nearly 70% in a dismal PC market whose downward spiral is only expected to gain momentum. Yet Chrome appliances make up the smallest sliver of that market. Only about 2% of personal computers sold last year are estimated to be Chromebooks, a figure that might grow to 5% by 2017. That's a very limited base of customers for UC developers to spend much time and resources on pursuing.
But there's likely development plans and product roadmaps to which I'm not privy and which make better sense of all this. Maybe Google is working on video conferencing systems that would move it beyond the huddle room niche. Maybe Customer Engagement OnAvaya will support agent interfaces other than Web clients accessed on Chromebooks. Maybe the WebEx running native on Chromebooks will magically appear in Cisco's next big UC announcement. Regardless, it will be interesting to see to what degree business communications and collaboration software will merge with the rising use of Chrome appliances within enterprises.
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