* Why Can't UC Be More Like WiFi?
* Check Out VoiceCon Photo Stream here
* Get the full rundown on Monday's announcements from the show here
Why can't Unified Communications be more like WiFi? That, strangely enough, was the question in this morning's kickoff general session on "Next-Generation Communications Architectures."
The subject was interoperability, and how everybody talks about it but nobody really does it. Manfred Arndt of HP said, "The reality is, standards aren't enough." Manfred suggested that Unified Communications elements needed to have a process and a certification very similar to what the WiFi Alliance came up with; other panelists quickly agreed that this kind of universally accepted testing and designation is what helped make WiFi ubiquitous.
However, this consensus about the need for ubiquitous compliance only served to remind our panelists about vendors' typical unwillingness to live by such specifications — a deficiency that each speaker found particularly noteworthy in his competitors' approaches. As I detailed in this post from this morning, the biggest flareup came between Phil Edholm of Avaya and Warren Barkley of Microsoft, who sparred over which was less interoperable — Microsoft's Office Communicator client or Avaya's proprietary call control protocol. My co-moderator for the session, Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group, rightly observed that a pretty damning case could be made against just about all vendors in terms of being interoperability-challenged, in one important scenario or another.
The other common thread throughout this session was that several of the representatives from what we used to call "voice vendors" embraced the description of themselves as “communications” vendors, contrasting themselves with companies represented on the panel like Microsoft and IBM, whose legacy isn't in real-time voice. Phil Edholm said, "The biggest danger in this industry in the next five years is to think of communications as a bolt-on. You'll have 5-10 things [i.e., key infrastructure elements] that won't work together." To deploy communications effectively, "it should be a communications company — someone who is dedicated to communications," Edholm said. Jack Jachner of Alcatel-Lucent made almost the same comment later on in the session: Noting that most enterprises end up choosing a lead vendor, Jachner suggested that, "If you're going to buy communications, buy from a communications company."
When one audience questioner asked what the vendors were doing to relieve the overall complexity of implementing these vendors' systems, with their various elements, the most interesting response came from Warren Barkley of Microsoft, who said that moving major elements of communications into the cloud would be the most significant way to relieve complexity for the enterprise implementers.
To me, this session was the perfect way to start out VoiceCon. The vendors drew some very clear lines and staked out their positions: Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent are making their stand as companies that know communications inside out; while Microsoft and IBM pushed the idea that "communications" doesn't necessarily have to mean a heritage of supporting real-time voice. As I wrote in the above-linked blog post, I think these companies know that we're hitting a crucial time: Enterprises are starting to sniff out the marketplace again after a period of retrenchment, and they're very likely not going to be in a mood to simply pick up where they left off, steadily chunking in new installations of IP-PBXs and IP telephones. They want to save costs and do it in the ways that are promised by the most recent technologies — virtualization, communications-enabled business processes, and more. They aren't going to commit to IP systems that simply emulate TDM forms and functions. They also want to leverage mobility and video. And they want to be able to put the pieces together without starting their own internal Manhattan Project.
At the same time, in a consolidating vendor environment, the stakes couldn't be higher for the likes of Avaya and Alcatel-Lucent, as well as for companies like Cisco and HP, and Microsoft and IBM — companies whose lines of business range far afield from just communications, yet need to compete in this market.
There's a ton of energy coursing through this VoiceCon — conference and exhibition registrations are way up, vendors sense a market coming back to life, and customers see new technologies coming, and know they need to master these changes. It's going to be an exciting week.
