I thought I would offer some comments on some UC predictions offered by Gurdeep Singh Pall, who heads Microsoft's UC group:
No Jitter | Microsoft: Gurdeep's UC Predictions
1. UC gets unified
The term "unified communications" has long been muddled and miss-used, and the problem is made worse by vendors who slap a "unified" label on products that are anything but. As the category matures, I predict UC will get unified. Analysts and associations will begin to hold vendors accountable for delivering true unified communications, which includes--at a minimum--a single identity with presence at the core, a single inbox, unified management, developer tools, and a unified user experience across voice, conferencing, instant messaging, and email.
A single identity with presence at the core is spot on - but it makes you wonder why Microsoft does not openly share its rich presence information? If identity and presence are at the core of UC - then Microsoft needs to open up how it federates presence to other systems beyond "basic presence". And the link to identity needs to be supportive of many different identity service providers. I would add an open integration and interoperability framework - a UC platform should not equate to "single vendor". I'm also not so convinced that a "single inbox" is always the case. Finally - I think Microsoft (and all UC vendors) need to think much more broadly about presence given social networking trends.
2. UC gets softer
The past year has seen a remarkable amount of industry consolidation as network PBX vendors have acquired software companies that bring the expertise and assets they need to stay competitive. Although the realities of the current economic environment will slow the pace of consolidation, the rapid move away from hardware-based systems toward software-based platforms will accelerate in the new year.
I'm not so sure (acceleration of software-based replacement of hardware systems) - but then again, I don't focus on hardware :) but I imagine that in some companies, the economic downturn will stretch timelines and people might want to extend current hardware/software "PBX" systems rather than rip-and-replace in favor of OCS. The idea of migrate at your own pace actually makes IBM's approach with its Sametime Unified Telephony approach suddenly look pretty good. IBM might have been a little slow to react to the UC market trend than Microsoft but sometimes being slow means you have the time to put together a framework that is flexible - it's worth putting aside some past assumptions and at least conduct the due diligence to check out IBM based on your needs to leverage current investments in Cisco, Avaya, etc.
3. UC goes everywhere
Increasingly, work is not confined to a single place. People need access to their workplace communications tools, wherever they happen to be and on whatever device they happen to be using. UC will increasingly span across the PC, browser, and mobile phone for truly integrated voice calling, email, IM, conferencing and presence on the go. Expect more of the UC features on your desktop to show up in your browser and on your mobile phone.
I totally agree - too much focus has been on the classic desktop scenario and yet longer-term, mobile will be the primary user experience for many people. The challenge of course for Microsoft is to improve its interoperability on different mobile devices, form factors and OS platforms.
4. UC applications spread
The next wave of UC will bring communications capabilities directly into business applications of all kinds. With UC-enabled applications, communicating becomes a natural and intuitive part of the workflow integrated at the desktop, mobile phone or browser. Expect UC-enabled applications to spread into a wide array of industries and markets.
The notion of communication-enabled business processes and UC-enabled applications is not new - but one of the gating factors has been insertion of these developer capabilities within the toolkits that everyday developers use on a regular basis. Microsoft has an opportunity here to bring UC to the general development community. The challenge will be do get out of UC-enabled productivity tools - Microsoft needs to think more along the lines of process-centric applications which offer a more well-defined business case and set of metrics to prove that embedding UC services actually has merit (e.g., reduced latency, coordination costs, etc).
5. Unified conferencing emerges
In 2009, the distinction between audio conferencing, video conferencing, and Web conferencing will begin to fade and "unified conferencing" will emerge as a new standard. As audio, video, and Web conferencing merge into a single system, price points will fall to a level where comprehensive, unified conferencing is available to everyone in an organization.
Again - I agree - but what does this mean for Microsoft? As OCS matures and scales (it's current web conferencing feature taps out at around 300 or less people) - does that mean Office Live Meeting becomes roadkill? I can see a point where MOLM and OCS from a conferencing perspective are redundant. Today, MOLM has a different management console (Intranet Portal) and has very little integration with OCS (other than leveraging a common front-end). So my prediction: Live Meeting eventually becomes OCS under the covers (hosted), or is simply replaced by OCS in the cloud. The same situation applies to IBM - I think its unsustainable to keep both Unyte and Sametime Conferencing ... prediction here is that Unyte becomes the foundation for IBM when it comes to web conferencing.
6. Voice mail finds the inbox
While unified messaging has been available for years, its adoption in businesses has been limited, but that is about to change. Over the next three years, many corporations will reach the end of their voice mail maintenance contracts. Rather than renewing, look for businesses to move to unified email and voice mail systems as a proven way to reduce maintenance costs while increasing efficiencies. You can expect mainstream adoption of unified messaging over the next three years as a result.
You would think that Microsoft's Exchange footprint would make this a slam-dunk but so far, Cisco seems to be holding its own. Agree conceptually though. As older systems reach end-of-like, people will be forced to make a move.
7. UC goes to the cloud
The ability to use on-premises software with cloud-based services is changing the way IT departments deploy and manage their systems. Companies will begin to take advantage of this flexibility in UC as vendors offer increasingly capable UC suites in the cloud alongside on-premises software. The result will enable companies to focus their IT resources where they will deliver the greatest competitive advantage to their business while outsourcing other IT capabilities to a service provider, often at significant cost savings.
OCS was designed from the ground-up to be an on-premises systems in my opinion so it will be interesting to watch how it shifts to the cloud given all the different protocols it uses and some of the topology requirements - just how many holes in the firewall will people have to open up for OCS in the cloud? I have not heard a clear message from IBM on how its Sametime Unified Telephony solution might work in the cloud (but, I might be behind on some of the UC trends of late).
8. Consumer experiences begin to drive UC requirements
UC capabilities are becoming a regular part of people's daily lives, and these experiences--whether with presence through Live Messenger, desktop VoIP with Skype, visual voice mail with the iPhone, or mobile email with a Windows Mobile phone--are transforming expectations of corporate IT. Organizations will need to modernize their systems to deliver UC to their people in order to stay competitive and attract the best new employees.
I agree with the idea that "digital life" trumps "digital work" - longer-term, companies will need to push the reset button on how they provision employees, lines between work and personal devices, etc. Again, this will pressure Microsoft on the interoperability front - for instance, let's start with simple (no pun intended) federation support for XMPP based systems.
9. Organizations evolve for UC
Delivering UC applications poses formidable challenges to the way many businesses are organized today, with separate fiefdoms for IT, telephony and sometimes networking. Given its cross-discipline nature, UC will drive internal organizational shifts that bring together disparate technology teams into centralized, unified groups that are better able to capitalize on the transformational capabilities UC can deliver.
Agree - UC cross laterally across many of the hierarchical structures within IT - huge governance challenges. Centralization sounds easy - but defining what common services need to be centralized and what capabilities can be decided upon locally is a lot tougher than it sounds.
10. UC adoption takes off
As IT budgets tighten in response to the current uncertain economic climate, UC looks more attractive than ever. The reason? UC provides immediate ROI by reducing travel costs, extending the life of existing investments, and improving productivity and collaboration. UC is one IT program that offers an immediate and clear case for businesses seeking to boost the efficiency and effectiveness of their people while controlling costs.
This is somewhat self-serving (for all vendors pushing "UC platforms, not just Microsoft) - individual UC components (web conferencing, etc) can help reduce travel costs - so I can do that without the totality of a UC platform and associated project. The business case for UC cannot be expressed as "unified communications for the sake of unified communications" - it needs to be positioned as a business system that enables work-related activities to improve in some way that is measurable.
Having read through the original article I think you've put together a great set of responses.
I will be watching as the rubber hits the road to see how this year takes shape.
Posted by: chuckstar76 | January 09, 2009 at 09:16 AM
RE unified conferencing --> all the vendors need to think about features that move from a centralized control model of running an online meeting and provide much more (and easier to use) flexibility in roles. (I.e. multiple moderators, flexible assignment of participants to use and control tools - not just an overall on/off switch, ability for multiple people to start a meeting, not just the person who paid for the account, etc.) I'd also like to see the ability to have multiple chat rooms (one for note taking, one for back channel, for example), easier linking of user presence in the meeting to a profile, easier one to one back-channelling (so many of the interfaces make it easy to make a mistake when moving from a private IM back to full group), keep advancing what we can do with white boards and finally, recordings with non proprietary formats for easier sharing of meetings AFTER the meeting.
The potential of web meetings is so shackled by the wretchedly limited conception of the design of the tools. Think bigger, vendors! Think OPEN. I'll pay for open.
Posted by: Nancy White | January 09, 2009 at 09:45 AM