Artilium

Thursday, November 01, 2007

The Urge to Converge: Microsoft Unified Communications Offering Turbo-Charges Software…

Over the past few weeks, unified communications has dominated discussion in the blogosphere as Microsoft officially launched Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007, its VoIP and UC server; and Office Communicator (OC), its UC client. These two tools take UC to the next level, embedding UC tools like instant messaging, conferencing, email, voice and presence into critical business applications.

As Microsoft sees it, UC is “about bringing together all of the different ways to communicate with each other.” That’s best done through a software interface. Capabilities should live or be embedded in applications used every day. By embedding them, communications become the jet fuel for work instead of an interruption. In line with this view, Microsoft has boldly predicted the demise of the PBX and outlined a software-centric VoIP and UC world. Put another way, the IP PBX as we know it today will disappear, and software IP PBX will take its place.

In his keynote speech at VoiceCon Orlando earlier this year, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, said: “Software-driven communication is bringing a pace that is much more dramatic.” He also stressed that OCS and OC 2007 mark an inflection point where software and telephony truly come together. This is because OCS will interoperate with about 90 percent of existing telephony systems and eventually allow companies to move core functions from the PBX to softwareThe detailed blog [http://www.searchvoip.com.au/topics/article.asp?DocID=1273175] points out that Microsoft’s dominant position in the desktop market is a great starting point and paves the way for Microsoft Office Communicator to become the desktop application dashboard, providing users with control and access to their UC applications—voice, IM, video and Web conferencing.

Another positive on the Microsoft side of the equation is its drive to forge the partnerships that matter. Microsoft has cleverly created an entire ecosystem of partners, building peripheral endpoints for OCS. What’s more, Microsoft’s acquisition of niche communications vendors like TellMe, a voice recognition tool, and Parlano, a group chat solution, round out the offering.

Artilium, a front-runner in UC software development, has made a conscious and strategic decision to enhance and extend Microsoft’s UC offering, allowing customers to leverage existing network investments to enable a new wave of innovative services without having to invest in new infrastructure. The initial pay-off can be measured in reduced communications costs; but the real prize for customers is the boost in business productivity that results when companies can place software at the heart of their business communications instead of having those communications tools reside in the network.

This view is echoed by an InfoWorld article by Leon Erlanger. [http://www.techworld.com/networking/features/index.cfm?featureid=3676]. Erlanger stresses that the heightened emphasis on embedded software to provide workers with the connectivity to communications and business processes that allow them to be productive wherever they are, is driving home the productivity message and likely to make UC attractive to a broader audience. After all, allowing workers to make calls through their company’s IP PBX just by clicking a client’s name in a document, or an email contact in Outlook, is a powerful and compelling value proposition.

“IP telephony and UC are moving towards a more IT-centric software architecture, laying the groundwork for broader acceptance,” Erlanger concludes. This trend will likely see UC become more readily accepted by SMEs, which are already showing high interest in IP telephony.Meanwhile, research findings from Maren Bennette of the Communications Management Association show that the VoIP market is currently undergoing a surge in VoIP take-up from SMEs who had waited until the benefits were clear. [http://news.crippssears.com/Unified-communications-can-improve-business-performance-1ad5288]

“Smaller companies and organizations were the last group to adopt VoIP, mainly because they had little reason to change the telephone systems they had in place already,” according to Bennette. Ironically, the take-up among SMEs is now markedly faster than for larger companies. Against this backdrop, Bennette advises managers to tackle their technology solutions “by implementation of unified communications applications, such as unified messaging - the combination of voice mail and email - audio and video conferencing.”

At all levels, the shift is about the movement of all communications to software. UC, including voice, will ultimately revolve around productivity and productivity software and it will benefit everyone, making it much easier for SMEs to integrate communications with all their other business processes.