The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) recently updated and approved its bylaws. You may be asking, so what? The so-what is that Avaya, Cisco, and IBM--three leading UC companies that are not currently members--provided input to the bylaws. While this doesn’t necessarily mean that these companies are going to join the UCIF, the fact is that the new bylaws address many of the issues that have been holding these companies back from joining. According to Microsoft attorney Marc Braner and UCIF Chairman Bernard Aboba, the new bylaws are based on a good deal of input both from members and non-members, and created a more open and democratic governance infrastructure.
The biggest change has to do with the distinction between founding directors and non-founding directors. According to the original bylaws, there was a difference between the founding directors and non-founding directors, with founding directors having weighted votes (their votes carried more weight). With the new bylaws, there’s only one class of directors, and everyone's vote is equal. In addition, the number of members on the board of directors was increased from 9 to 12, and going forward, the board can increase this number without requiring a bylaw amendment. My take on this is that companies that are non-founders will have more say in what happens and can play a more important role, which was one of their primary complaints about the way the forum was structured.
The configuration of the board has changed, with a new formula to determine the makeup of the board. Without getting into too much detail, 1/3 of the maximum number of board seats are reserved for Contributing Participants seats, which means that today, four seats are reserved for Contributing Participants, the middle UCIF membership level (as opposed to just Board of Director Participants, the top UCIF membership level), which are elected to two-year terms. An election is triggered when all of the regular seats reserved for Board of Director Participants are filled (currently 5 of the 8 seats are filled). For the election, both Board of Director Participants can nominate Contributing Participants and Contributing Participants can nominate themselves or others, and the nominees that receive the four highest number of votes will have board seats for a two-year period. Again, this gives participants at lower UCIF membership levels an opportunity to play a bigger role in the forum and have their voices heard.
Another change relates to the Chairman of Board of Directors. Previously the position was a three-year term, with Microsoft designated as the initial chairman (and we wonder why Cisco was reluctant to join the forum!). The new rules state that the chairman is now selected on an annual basis by a vote from the Board of Directors. This seems much more reasonable and fair.
According to Aboba, the UCIF's hope is that the bylaws are no longer an impediment for other companies to join the forum. The forum's goal is to promote interoperability and the members are working together to meet this goal. Its efforts to get input from and work with companies like Avaya, Cisco, and IBM demonstrates that they want this to be an open forum so that "the customer wins in the end."
The forum has 35 members, including Alcatel-Lucent, Siemens, Acme Packet, NET, AudioCodes, and Sonus. While several voice/telephony vendors have recently joined, there is still an obvious gap in terms of UC players--notably Avaya, Cisco, and IBM.
Will the changes in the bylaws create the opening for these vendors to join the forum? Maybe, maybe not. Clearly the previous bylaws were one of the biggest impediments to these companies, which viewed the forum as an uneven playing field, giving Microsoft and its buddies an unfair position compared with its competitors.
Clearly mistakes were made initially, and creating the forum's mission statement, board, and legal structure without input from non-founders has created friction. To outsiders, it made the non-members appear as if they don't want to support an open forum, which was not the case. Getting input to the bylaws from the UC market leaders will make it more likely that some of them will join the UCIF in the near future. Does this guarantee that they will join? Not at all. But it eliminates one of the biggest barriers, and the one that vendors have been shouting about the loudest.
My hope is that these vendors find ways to work out their differences and come together to improve interoperability, propelling the UC industry forward, and providing customers with more options and solutions.
