While UC has been on center stage at VoiceCon for the last few years, Interop is a different event. UC has been more of a sideshow at Interop--and that's not a criticism. Interop is aimed at a different, broader audience, and the IT world is wrestling with a wide range of issues besides UC--cloud computing, security, virtualization, all nuances of network design, and appropriate planning and actions to take during the current downturn.That said, if you wanted an update on UC, Interop had a broad menu from which to choose. Eric Krapf put together an impressive lineup of sessions for the track, although I do have one criticism. The track title lumped VoIP and UC together, even though I and many others have argued that it s important to disaggregate the two. Still, the sessions Eric put together were well-attended. Marty Parker's day-long tutorial focused on how to create an enterprise UC plan, and got excellent reviews. Eric moderated a packed, standing-room-only session on next generation communications architectures that featured analysis and commentary by IBM, Siemens and Cisco.
Michael Finneran herded a panel of suppliers including Sprint, Enterasys/Siemens, Varaha Systems and T-Mobile to discuss unified mobile communications. I moderated a packed panel session discussing the emerging competitive landscape, and managed to prevent fisticuffs from breaking out between IBM, Cisco, Microsoft and Nortel. Following that session, I led a workshop in which Karen Bailey from Wells Fargo reprised her excellent presentation at VoiceCon. She joined me in a discussion about finding application payoffs for UC. And there was a session about UC and Enterprise 2.0.
The biggest UC announcement at Interop came from the keynote stage. Ann Livermore, HP's executive VP for the Technology Solutions Group, was joined on stage by Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's Business Division, to announce a partnership to jointly develop UC capabilities. This will greatly expand HP s previous OCS managed services offerings, and is backed up by a new four-year, $180 million joint product and services development commitment.
The capabilities shown included a demonstration of international video teleconferencing via HP's Halo running through Microsoft's Office Communicator client on an HP laptop. Other product initiatives include HP's development of USB desk phones, and optimization of ProCurve servers to run Microsoft's OCS, SharePoint and Exchange.
One of the biggest opportunities in the announcement is the plan to expand and train HP professional services staff to offer assessment, architecture planning and design, and implementation and support services. The most important UC applications initiatives for enterprises will come from embedding UC capabilities into business processes, and the planned skills investment by HP and Microsoft will be important to support such opportunities. The development of an ecosystem of integrators, architects and implementers will supplement enterprise internal capabilities, especially as the UC market continues its ramp-up.
Of course, there have been many "partnerships" among the UC vendors over the past few years, and it's reasonable to question how important and how deep this alliance will really prove to be. Backing their words with a substantial investment is one indicator. Perhaps this is also a strategic counterpoint to the IBM-Cisco relationship. However, it's less clear how this announcement significantly strengthens Microsoft's plans to enter the telephony marketplace, although HP's professional services strength could be of help. We'll just have to see how this partnership develops.
All in all, Interop continues to be a great event, although UC is not the dominant theme. And, I have some good news to report: I passed through the gaming tables and slots with my wallet mostly intact!
