This is the first of a two-part article. Part 2 can be found here.
One word that is slowly entering the UC conversation is "Google". Its name has become a verb in the English language and a question mark in the UC lexicon. The company created an empire by giving away services. Not simple services, like a hotel that offers a few free nights, but recurring services that become part of our daily lives. Google is pervasive in most online activities, and increasingly, offline as well. As the company blows apart business models it builds more loyalty among a larger base. But Google isn't a charity, it is generating impressive revenue and its paying customers appear to be just as loyal as those enjoying its free services.
Unified Communications is not a product, it's a result. The opportunity is in understanding all of our communication paths and tools and improving them to align better with our business objectives. In the past 20 years, communications and processes moved from paper to electronic-based systems. Our communication methods and types significantly increased and will continue to do so. Unified Communications provides a tool set and perspective to better improve communication, work flow, and collaboration. Tool sets are much harder to compare than products.
At first glance one might incorrectly conclude that Google does not offer Unified Communications. Google does not appear on any of Allan Sulkin's UC market share reports. Gartner doesn't mention Google in their UC Magic Quadrant study. And the various vendors considered in the UC space don't position against Google, at least not publicly. Google doesn't advertise or exhibit as a UC vendor. It doesn't have a sales force calling upon CIOs (to my knowledge) about UC. Unlike its UC competitors, it offers very few physical products, and it avoids public conversations. Even finding a Google phone number can be a challenge.
Evidently, none of this matters. The company has a loyal base of active users of their services and software--as well as strong revenue. Google is entrenched in businesses of all sizes. At the recent UC-focused VoiceCon conference, Google wasn't a sponsor or exhibitor. Google is definitely off the radar, in part because its UC services are free. Sulkin's reports, for example, are based on shipments, not downloads. Plus UC isn't exactly a well defined space. Very few or arguably none of the known UC players offer a complete solution.
Nonetheless, mention of Google made it into the VoiceCon Locknote thanks to Blair Pleasant, who said: "Google is on everyone’s mind".
The following is a summary of Google services from a UC perspective. The list is not exhaustive. It is organized by functional service areas. I've broken the summary into two articles; the first half begins today, and the second half will be posted tomorrow.
1) Voice and Telephony
Google does not manufacture, partner (at this time), or offer a telephone system or solution. Just a few years ago, a phone system was more or less considered a core requirement for unified communications. Three key vendors broke that mold:
* Digium's Asterisk is the largest player in an open source voice communications market that is estimated to represent 18% share of the overall PBX market. Digium's hardware division primarily makes I/O boards - no phones, initially no phone systems.
* Microsoft entered the UC market without any hardware and leverages its dominant operating systems along with hardware partnerships such as Polycom for phones.
* IBM is considered a strong UC player, but delivers voice through partnerships with multiple equipment and service based solutions.
In other words, a phone system on the line card is no longer a UC requirement. However, a solution for voice is a requirement.
Google Voice, Google's primary voice service (in beta) is unlike any other service. It effectively offers enhancements to other dial-tone solutions. The enhancements include features such as simultaneous ring, unified messaging, SMS, and voice mail transcription. But there is much more to Google Voice--including the recent acquisition of its partner Gizmo5. (I wrote beforehand that Google Voice needed stronger integraton with SIP: Done). Google Voice offers two types of services: call enhancement and carrier services.
Call enhancement services are currently optimized for incoming calls. The Google Voice user has several options and controls regarding where the call rings, call recording, call screening, conferencing, and messaging. Outbound services are more complex and restrictive at this time, but this is changing. These types of services are generally available from PBX makers. The important distinction is Google Voice enhances a (any) dial-tone solution, it does not provide dial-tone. This model change threatens to turn the feature-rich PBX into a basic pipe; much like Google did to other industries--such as the ISP.
The term "common carrier" describes too well that most carriers have very few unique characteristics. In the spirit of 7-UP, some analysts now describe Google Voice as the Un-Common Carrier. Google Voice is a new type of model from the traditional carrier business. Rather than provide dial-tone (and 911 liability), Google Voice routes calls through servers and carriers to provide advanced features. This enables attractive international rates as well as services such as number porting and number assignment. The CLEC craze created an ecosystem of wholesale suppliers that Google is leveraging to create this cloud based service. BusinessWeek reported an impressive cast of characters behind Google Voice:
In its correspondence with the FCC, Google also reveals several companies that help it provide Google Voice. The list includes fiber-optic network operators Level 3 Communications (LVLT) and Global Crossing (GLBC). It also mentions Broadvox Communications, Bandwidth.com, and Pac-West Telecomm. IBasis (IBAS) is responsible for connecting outbound international calls on Google Voice and Neustar (NSR) provides "porting and carrier lookup services," Google says in the letter. Syniverse Technologies (SVR) provides the free text-messaging service.
Other documents reveal Google Voice has grown to 1.419 million users, 40% of whom use the service daily. Google voice is currently a free service, charging only for international calling. It breaks the model of proprietary/closed phones and phone systems by extending advanced features to any phone, any place. It breaks the monopoly chokehold that wireless carriers have on SMS and international long distance. Unlike with landlines, wireless users cannot choose an alternative long distance provider, and the lack of competition results in high rates. Consider this recent tweet from a user: "AT&T charges me $2.40/min for calls to India. Verizon Droid + Google Voice charges me $0.07/min. 35x difference."
Google introduced a Google Voice client (app) for Android phones and Blackberry phones (a version for the iPhone was blocked by Apple). Technically, any PBX brand could offer a similar solution to simplify outbound calling (with a "public" callerID instead of the cell phone callerID), but such an offering would be tied to specific hardware. Google's exact intent with Google Voice is not public, but it is obviously taking the service very seriously. First the cell phone client, then support of stand alone voice mail services, and most recently the acquisition of Gizmo5. One might conclude the service and these recent activities just might be part of a plan.
2) Presence
Presence, the UC community agrees, is a critical component. Nearly every UC solution involves a client that enables presence and IM. This is generally a client that runs on the computer, sometimes with integration with the telephone system/solution. Presence is readily available in the consumer world, typically for free. The clear winner here is Skype with over 500 million registered users worldwide. However, Skype is not very far on the path of integration with phone systems--only the Skype for Asterisk product integrates client presence information with the PBX; the Skype for SIP product/service does not. Skype is also plagued with spam--many CIOs believe a closed/federation approach to presence/IM is better.
Google offers a presence solution called Google Talk. The service includes a voice service, presence information, IM, voice messaging, and video calling. The service is free and available to all Gmail users--over 100 million. [Note: Google Education, which targets universities, now claims over "5 million students at thousands of schools in over 145 countries" using Google Apps.] At this time, there is no integration between Google Talk and Google Voice except both applications, along with Gmail, share Google Contacts. Google Talk is based on the XMPP standard and can be deployed closed, federated, or in an open configuration. Google has a significant installed base of presence users. Additionally, Gizmo5 also offers IM Federation for Google Talk and other popular IM services.
Skype: Google Talk and Google Voice both have elements found in Skype (now under the same controlling ownership as Avaya/Nortel). Since nearly all PBX makers are rushing to develop and deploy a desktop client for presence, Skype's robust, mature, and deployed client becomes very interesting (see The Case to Buy Skype, April 2009). Andy Abramson closely watches Google Voice and Skype. In March, he speculated what might happen if Google Voice added a native SIP capability:
Poor Skype just lost value with this. You see, Skype built a model based on claims of calls between Skype ID's being free. They have regularly claimed to be open. With SIP traffic piped in from Google Voice the lions share of the money goes to Google as Skype becomes nothing but a dumb pipe...From where I'm sitting it seems the Three Wise Men of Google Voice (Wesley, Craig and Vincent) now have the big rig rolling along the information super-hiway with a lot of weight in the back (Google ad dollars, pipe, dark fiber, bandwidth, free ad visibility, many happy users). (Thanks to Andy for providing some information for this article.)
The current model of presence is flawed. Computer activity-based presence is not a very accurate indicator of availability. Sometimes people are available for a phone call while away from their computer and often not available while at their computer. Some solutions attempt to improve this with calendar integration. This can be done today with several products that access Outlook/Exchange or Google Calendar (such as Vmerge). The challenge is indicating availability perhaps while driving to an appointment. This can be solved by adding location awareness to the presence equation. For example, Locale (Android) can silence a cell phone when at church. Using activity, appointments, and location could strengthen presence, availability, and preferred phone device capabilities automatically.
3) Collaboration
Collaboration tools specifically enable people to work together in different places or times. Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM are all pushing collaboration as the key value to UC--though never as a single product. With Microsoft, collaboration includes Sharepoint, OCS, Office, and Exchange. With IBM, collaboration includes Sametime and the Lotus products. Cisco recently announced several collaboration products including WebEx enhancements and several new video solutions such as Cisco Show and Share. Google offers many impressive collaboration tools, but less integrated than other solutions.
Google Docs: A suite of business products similar in functionality to Microsoft Office. A major upgrade in functionality is expected in 2010 which reportedly will narrow the gap between Google Apps and (today's) Microsoft Office. Google Apps today includes the ability to share and collaborate on specific documents over the Internet. All of the applications within Google Apps include sharing and collaboration capabilities--be it a calendar or a spreadsheet. The big missing feature is revision tracking, but it does offer impressive version control. A paid version of Google Docs, known as Google Apps, allows private domains (instead of gmail.com), but does not currently integrate with Google Voice.
Google Wave: Google Wave, currently in closed beta, is a new open cloud based service that uses rich formatting for conversation and document creation. It is a product that helps users communicate and collaborate on the web via text, photos, videos, maps, and other formats. It is also a platform with a set of open APIs that allow developers to embed waves in other web services and to build extensions that work inside waves. This creates a mashup opportunity in a collaboration environment. At Astricon there was a demo by Tim Panton combining Google Wave, Skype, Asterisk, and Ibook. Keep in mind, Google Wave was just a few weeks old at the time of this demo. Google just acquired Appjet and its Etherpad product for the Google Wave team. Etherpad is a document collaboration service, similar to Google Docs but with updates to documents visible by all users in real time. It could mean that as Google Wave matures, it could displace Google Docs.
YouTube/Google Video: The primary difference between these services is the audience; consumer and business. The Cisco Visual Networking Index estimates that by 2012, 90% of IP network traffic will be video related. Much of that content will need to be saved and made available as needed. Google has extensive experience with this through YouTube.
Blogger: Blogger is a highly simplified way to publish and organize information on the web. This particular Google service is a public Internet service, but recreating it as a private Intranet should be trivial. A simple way for project teams, departments, and individuals to communicate updates.
Google Picasa: A photo editing and sharing service. A recently launched Google application for Android phones known as Google Goggles enables visual search using photos as the input. The item in question can be a landmark, a book cover, a logo, or even a store front (also uses GPS and compass) and returns detailed information about the item.
Look for Part 2 of this feature tomorrow.
Dave Michels is a frequent contributor and blogs regularly about telecom and voice at www.pindropsoup.com.
Dave Michels is a frequent contributor and blogs regularly about telecom and voice at www.pindropsoup.com.
