With all the coverage of Google's announcements this week, the partnership with Avaya seemed to slip bye almost unnoticed. But I think this is a significant point in the unified communications market. Communication vendors have held rank for the most part and have focused almost exclusively on SIP and SIMPLE. XMPP and Jingle have been viewed as "radioactive" by some vendors. Same goes for Microsoft. Even IBM only supports XMPP through its Lotus Sametime Gateway. Yet there are XMPP-based systems in the real world - especially in the public sector and financial services. Dropping allegiances to particular protocols is sometimes well-justified. It opens doors to innovative solutions that otherwise might never reach the market. Presence is an example of a technology that is being constrained by vendor intransigence and protocol narrow-mindedness.
So I give Avaya a lot of credit on its move to more directly support XMPP and Jingle through its announced partnership with Google. I do not believe they will be able to keep this at the SMB level. I imagine that market forces will encourage it to be available across small and large market solutions. Large enterprises deal with small enterprises and consumers that might increasingly use Google Apps.
Google deserves credit for considering the unified communications angle when it officially unveiled its Google Apps story.
For both companies, this is not so much about the technology plumbing but about delivering value to users (who don't really care whether connections are made via SIP/SIMPLE or XMPP/Jingle). The deal represents a useful combination of technology that should be attractive to certain consumers and businesses. One can imagine click-to-call, click-to-conference, aggregated presence, a unified directory and universal e-mail and voice mail inbox along with contact information being exchanged between Google and Avaya applications. I could imagine synergies from a call center perspective as well (click-to-queue option alongside results from a Google search).
I'm sure the folks at Jabber and Jive will track success of this venture as well, as will communication vendors who may be faced with a similar decision down the road as Google Apps gains traction.
Avaya, a leading global provider of business communications applications, systems and services, plans to combine the power of intelligent communications with Web services, enabling companies to enhance productivity and deliver superior customer service. The Google Enterprise Professional program includes developers, consultants and independent software vendors that provide value-added services for Google enterprise products.
Under the terms of the agreement, Avaya will develop, market and support offers that integrate Avaya's advanced communications solutions for small businesses with the new Google Apps™ Premier Edition, the subscription services solution for email, instant messaging, calendar and Web publishing services Google announced today (see related Google release at http://www.google.com/press/).
Google Press Release
To provide more options and value to customers of Google Apps Premier Edition, Google Enterprise Professional partners like Avaya and Postini are developing a variety of solutions based on our APIs, including email gateways, enhanced security, Google Calendar synchronization, third-party integration with Google Talk, as well as offering deployment, migration, and additional support services.
The Avaya integration is pretty cool. But there should be more CTI integration to come… the API of Google Apps make that possible. For example we are developing an FREE open source "business application platform" (think salesforce.com). Our first application is working tightly integrated with GOOGLE APPS. http://www.applicationexchange.com.
Posted by: edbong | February 25, 2007 at 08:29 AM