Products Aren’t Real Until They Are!

You can tell a real product because it has a price, it can be installed, tested and used in the real world.

Presence status = busy (searching for unicorns, a leprechaun and CUCiMoc)

Hey, like most of you, I love the next new thing. I saw the latest Start Trek movie (very good! Especially on Imax screen!) and can't wait to order my personal transporter to shorten my commute.

The thing is, I know a personal transporter is not real. I am also not willing to sign up to be a beta tester and have my atoms scattered throughout my backyard or co-mingled with my cat a la Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

The trouble in the UC space is that the line between real and "real" (aka not real) is often blurred.

Take CUCiMOC (feel free to randomly capitalize any combination of letters) which is Cisco's latest marketing ploy to integrate Cisco infrastructure with Microsoft Office Communicator in a way that relegates OCS to mainly instant messaging.

Right now CuciMoc is not a real product.

CuciMoc? CookieMoc?

CucIMoC, which stands Cisco UC Integration for Microsoft Office Communicator, is an idea; it is a concept. It might even be a good concept (?).

There is even a CuCIMoc Flash demo (note the small text at 0:30 that says the visual interface depiction is prototype and may vary from actual user experience); but a Flash demo does make this a product.

The good thing about a concept is that no one can find any flaws or point out performance issues or even open bug reports. Concepts are pure, they are unblemished by the details that make up the real world of integrated communications.

Of course, the bad thing with a concept, is that no one has ever placed a call or collaborated with colleagues using a concept. Try as I might, the CuciMoc Flash demo did not let me contact my wife to say I was going to be home late because I needed to finish this blog entry.

UC solutions can be complicated. Multi-vendor UC solutions ARE complicated.

The devil is in the details, the proof is in the pudding, where the rubber meets the road is where real UC solutions begin.

Unless you can touch it, feel it, beat on it, it is not a product.

Ideas and concepts are fine but make sure you plan your organizations near-term UC strategy based on products. And make sure those evaluating different potential UC solutions in your organization understand what is real. (Pilots are always a good idea!)

Presence status = available (willing and able to test the latest real product)

Comments

[SR]

CUCIMOC was released today, http://www.markturpin.org/archives/234

[mark]

Kevin,

Not to offend, but CUCIMOC was real in May when you wrote this. It was in beta testing with select customers prior to it being released. The pictures in the flash demo were of the original conversation pane layout which has changed dramatically as a result of the beta testing.

Just because something isn't publicly available doesn't mean it isn't real - it just meant Cisco didn't want to make something available that wasn't ready for prime time yet.... Hence the testing period.

Certainly the marketing people want to get the word out though :) That's why you hear about it before it is released... Building the excitement!

-mark

[Kevin Kieller]

Hi Mark,

A few days before I wrote the above post I had just visited the Cisco offices and asked if a) they had CUCIMOC in their demo centre? b) if any of them had seen CUCIMOC?

These were pretty senior people I was asking and the answer to both questions was "no". They had only seen a slide deck and a Powerpoint demo.

I see on your blog (www.markturpin.org) you have posted some screen shots of the CUCIMOC install which is great.

I would love to see what the interface looks like when you are able to sign into OCS. It will likely take me a while to get this setup in one of our labs so we can test it out.

I still feel that this type of integration is likely to be hard for Cisco to keep up as Microsoft changes the OC client. For instance, the tab interface has changed in OCS R2 -- conspiracy theorists would suggest Microsoft did this to break this type of integration.