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For the past three days some industry "heavy hitters" have shared their organizations' visions and tried to capture the mindshare of the VoiceCon 2010 attendees and other communication professionals around the world.
If you missed any of the keynotes you can see them all here: http://tv.voicecon.com/
After watching the various keynotes, for me the winner was Microsoft, with Siemens coming in second place (Siemens in fact won the Best of VoiceCon award).
I say this because Microsoft, more than anyone else, communicated a clear, concise vision and tied this vision to real, measurable business benefits.
OCS "14" (aka OCS 2010, aka Microsoft Communication Server 2010, aka MCS 2010) is now clearly positioned, and able, to provide all of the voice, IM, presence, and conferencing capabilities for small, medium and large organizations.
The recent announcements of OCS SIP Trunking support from Verizon, lower cost IP phones that register directly to OCS (from Polycom and Aastra) and gateway devices that support existing SIP phones (Audiocodes and NET) and provide remote branch survivability (HP, Audiocodes, NET, Dialogic) provide good momentum for Microsoft's vision.
OCS 14 as demoed refines the strong capabilities of OCS 2007 R2 and adds support for E911 (location awareness), skills search, refines the Office Communicator interface and generally provides a tool users would like to use.
The demo of extending Microsoft platform to provide a browser-based Silverlight contact centre looked slick and it was nice to hear an actual developer talk about the ability to extend the platform.
The one important place where Microsoft's UC offering is vulnerable is support for mobile devices. With RIM dragging its feet on updating the OC client for the BlackBerry and Microsoft's needing to reboot its mobile phone strategy (Windows 7 phone), this is the one area where Microsoft has a weak spot. However, no vendor really exploited this weakness.
Cisco's demo was good. I love the Cisco flip phone that can shoot video and then plug it into the USB port on the phone (aka a computer disguised as a phone – wonder what one of these handsets will cost?).
The problem was that the central theme around the Intercompany Media Engine (IME) felt like a "been there done that" demo. OCS federation already provides much of the similar capability and I use OCS daily to federate with customers, partners and extended colleagues in a secure, controlled manner. I know Cisco believes there is a unique value proposition associated with IME; however, they did little to demonstrate any uniqueness.
Avaya clearly gets the award for the best use of "big words" and complex sentence structure. Could Kevin Kennedy say disaggregate any more times? And the lesson about "entropy" was interesting if not particularly relevant. (For more entropicality <grin> see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entropy)
Perhaps a tip, if your slide title takes two lines it is likely too long: "Architecturally Compelling Business User Enablement" (huh?).
Avaya clearly sees SIP as "the one ring (thing) to rule them all" (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring for more Lord of the the Rings background). And Avaya clearly wants Avaya Session Manager to be at the core of the "SIP cloud". The trouble is that in some ways they are late to the party. Microsoft OCS has always used SIP as the central core to its communications platform. And in terms of platforms, there are millions of .NET developers who are familiar with the tools needed to extend and enhance the Microsoft OCS and Exchange platforms while the number of Avaya DevConnect partners are measured in thousands.
In the end I agree with Avaya's message that SIP is key and that building a platform with an accessible API is great but I think Microsoft will be able to better capitalize on both the shift to SIP and on exciting a developer community to leverage a platform API.
And what was with the "hypothetical demo"? Haven't we moved past PowerPoint and Flash demos?
Now IBM with Lotus has some good things going on. (Note to Microsoft product team: Spend some time looking at the Lotus platform for a source of good ideas.) In many ways, the Lotus suite of UC and Collaboration products is more refined than the OCS/Exchange/Sharepoint stack; however, certainly in most enterprises Microsoft, through the penetration of Microsoft Office, has captured more mindshare. Almost every CIO I have the opportunity to speak with asks about integrating with the Microsoft platform, even if they are not interested in moving to an entirely Microsoft-powered communications platform. (Although some CIOs of large organization I have talked with are interested in moving to one, centralized communications platform based on Microsoft tools – and OCS 14 makes this much more likely.)
IBM is also wrestling with the shift between supporting third-parties for integration with telephony and voice and, now, looking to build call control functionality into Sametime Unified Telephony in order to simplify the overall solution. Microsoft has already made this transition and as such Microsoft now clearly competes directly with traditional PBX providers. I feel IBM is still trying to play both sides.
While "open" is better in theory, including many pieces in a Communication Solution greatly increases the technical risk and operational complexity and cost – often negating any business value associated with the solution. All things being equal, dealing with fewer vendors is better.
Even with "open" standards, not everything can integrate with everything (See the Integration Myth). Just declaring something "open" does not let existing infrastructure components work with your new applications. (Avaya, IBM and Siemens all pitch this "open" integration approach.)
Interestingly, the Lotus Foundations appliance, which includes everything in a single appliance, is exciting specifically because one vendor (in this case IBM) has created an well integrated solution.
And when IBM speaks of user adoption, which I do believe is key, more users right now are familiar with the Microsoft toolset than with the IBM toolset, so a more straightforward path to user adoption is arguably extending and expanding Microsoft Office, Outlook, and MSN Messenger.
I was confused by IBM video case study where the company spoke about Sametime being better adopted then OCS. Would have liked to understand why this was the case. In my experience both OCS and Sametime provide similar functionality. OCS generally works better in environments that use Outlook/Exchange; Sametime is best in organization who have adopted Notes for messaging.
Mark Straton from Siemens provided a clear and well-presented keynote. He shared some good statistics and reminded people that Siemens while not as established in North America is a leader in worldwide VOIP and is a key provider of software-based voice solutions.
Siemens is also doing some very interesting things using the Amazon cloud, taking steps I would like to see Microsoft undertake to support more virtualized roles, including virtualization of some of the voice and conferencing roles.
I liked how Mark focused on understanding business issues and opportunities as the first step. This is a similar approach I discuss in my Werewolves and UC post.
Siemens also does a good job of showing off integration with social networking platform (such as twitter, linked in and google latitudes). The "tell me when" location based alerts are interesting.
Siemens not surprisingly also talks about building a resilient SIP server. Arguably Siemens has been working at this for longer than Avaya and Microsoft.
Siemens also seems to have a good start building a cloud-based hosted service.
Some good, some bad, some ugly.
In the end, when the dust settled, I still believe the showdown at the VoiceCon Corall went to Microsoft.
If you watched the VoiceCon keynotes, what did you think?
Recently a large organization that was looking at deploying a unified communication solution for 43,000 people asked me to share some key lessons we have learned through other UC deployments.
I thought I would share a quick version of the lessons with you as well.
The 8 UC lessons are:
Lesson 1: Unified communications is really just a communication solution.
Lesson 2: If you don't know the business objectives then you will never achieve them
Lesson 3: Unified Communications can be confusing and it can be complicated.
Lesson 4: While UC can save organizations money and improve productivity, it might not do so for your organization.
Lesson 5: Not everything integrates with everything else.
Lesson 6: If you don't know the tradeoffs you are making you likely don't understand your solution.
Lesson 7: Piloting technology is good. Piloting user adoption is mandatory.
Lesson 8: In the end, a UC project is just a big project. Do all the standard project management stuff.
Lesson 1: Unified communications is really just a communication solution.
Far too much time has been spent worrying about the exact definition of UC. Let's face it, every vendor has been trying to define UC in a way that favors their products. Mobile companies make UC all about mobile devices; software companies make it all about software (and treat phones as obsolete); network companies make the foundation for everything UC built on the network.
The exact definition is irrelevant and shifts focus from the key important issue. Time should instead be spent figuring out how a UC (or communication solution) will improve your business.
Lesson 2: If you don't know the business objectives then you will never achieve them
Too many UC projects (and too many projects in general) have no defined objectives or "objectives" that are so vaguely defined they provide no value.
To be valuable, objectives need to be measurable and achievable.
If you plan to improve productivity, you need to be able to quantify and measure current productivity, quantify and measure future productivity and define the amount of improvement you plan to achieve.
If you plan for a UC solution to reduce travel costs, you need to identify by how much and over what time line.
Lesson 3: Unified Communications can be confusing and it can be complicated.
If you are not a little bit confused or if you see UC as straightforward then you probably a) have never been involved in a UC project or b ) are under-estimating the time, resources and budget you will require.
Lesson 4: While UC can save organizations money and improve productivity, it might not do so for your organization.
Unified communications can definitely save organizations money. UC can save hard dollars related to travel, real estate, audio conferencing and others. UC can improve productivity and collaboration.
However, just because you found a case study online doesn't mean your organization will achieve the same savings or any savings.
If you are implementing UC to achieve specific objectives, you need to build a detailed business case that includes assumptions and variables relevant for your organization.
Let's face it, the posted case studies are self-selecting. No one posts a case study from a project that increased costs or decreased productivity but there are many mis-managed UC projects that did exactly that.
Lesson 5: Not everything integrates with everything else.
Vendors want to vend (aka sell). To do this they are happy to tell you that their round peg will fit into your existing square hole.
Often, even if they are trying to be truthful they do not know the truth. How many vendors have actually integrated their products with another vendors? This is why there are systems integrators.
If you are relying on multiple pieces fitting together nicely, don't talk to the vendors. Talk to actual customers who have implemented the exact same integration or talk to a systems integrator who has completed the exact same integration (and then talk to the customer they did it for.)
Lesson 6: If you don't know the tradeoffs you are making you likely don't understand your solution.
Every existing UC solution has issues and each possible option requires you to make tradeoffs. If you don't know what tradeoffs you are making by choosing a particular solution then you haven't done your homework.
Lesson 7: Piloting technology is good. Piloting user adoption is mandatory.
Almost every UC business case relies on your users actually using the new features. What if you invest in capabilities that your users find too difficult to use or simply choose not to use? The business case will tank.
Think about older video conferencing solutions that gather dust in the corner of meeting rooms.
When you pilot a solution, choose non IT pilot participants, capture usage and adoption metrics and survey the pilot users for feedback after the pilot. Use this data to adjust your business case as appropriate.
Lesson 8: In the end, a UC project is just a big project. Do all the standard project management stuff.
I do not believe that there is some special UC implementation methodology. A UC implementation project is simply a big, relatively complex project. A big project with lots of moving pieces that often involves many disparate groups in your organization.
Well defined objectives, a detailed project plan, clear roles and responsibilities, strong leadership, weekly status reports/meetings and all the normal and important project management tools become critical for success.
I would welcome your thoughts and feedback on these lessons.
Have additional lessons to add to the list? Please let me know.