The Internetnews article below contains some thoughtful comments from Mark Cortner in Burton Group's Network & Telecom Strategies service. Mark and I tag-team often on UC-related topics. I will be traveling to San Francisco to attend the launch event on 10/16. The event is significant in many ways and important enough that I thought it would be helpful to put some historical context around the formal launch of Microsoft's UC solutions.
In many reports that I read, people believe Microsoft started its "UC Journey" with OCS (circa 2005). Those who have have followed Microsoft more diligently can rightfully disagree with that level of commentary. Microsoft actually began its efforts to move into what-we-now-call the unified communications market around 2002-ish. Microsoft has always been attracted to markets that are broadly horizontal in nature, have large numbers associated with it, and markets where network effects can catalyze linkages across multiple product/service offerings. Getting into voice-related communication markets was incredibly seductive back in 2002/03. IM and presence was the logical stepping stone - always - IM/presence was never the end-point from Microsoft's perspective. This was obvious when Microsoft made an fundamental architectural commitment to SIP and constructed early prototypes of RingCam (now RoundTable).
Many industry experts thought that LCS was merely an IM and presence platform - and they were actually correct in that position as a short-run assessment. Before moving into an adjacent market (e.g., VoIP/telephony, audio/video conferencing and mobile), Microsoft had to establish a credible platform in the real-time collaboration space (IM/Presence and web conferencing). Prior efforts (based on Exchange) had failed and left the company lagging behind IBM at the time. (Note: unfortunately that's about the time IBM decided to take its eye off of Sametime - a miscalculation from which they are only now recovering). The long-run strategy was always to bring together its hosted conferencing service (Office Live Meeting), IM/Presence platform (Live Communications Server) and e-mail platform (Exchange), into a cohesive UC solution.
The effort has been one of the most faultlessly executed multi-year strategies that I have seen from a vendor in some time. There are some areas of vulnerability where efforts could have been more complete (e.g., application development, scaling limit of the on-premises web conferencing server, distributed topologies with multiple data centers, etc.) and areas where interoperability needs to improve (e.g., XMPP, rich presence), but overall, no fatal oversight from a strategic perspective.
The undertaking should be recognized as being incredibly complex: superseding LCS with OCS, adding unified messaging to Exchange, adding UC capabilities to its mobile platform, delivering RoundTable and transforming its speech technologies into a horizontal capability across its UC platform. Governing this effort is more impressive when you consider that it has taken multiple years (2002-2007), involved multiple products/services, crossed multiple technology domains, required coordination across different release cycles management across multiple internal teams, development of supporting partner channels, integration/interoperability agreements with multiple software and hardware vendors as well as development and alignment of various go-to-market programs.
So it has taken Microsoft approximately 5 years to (1) establish a credible platform in the real-time collaboration space and (2) position itself to successfully transition into adjacent markets (which themselves are in the process of converging (IM, presence, telephony, conferencing, mobile, etc). Other vendors considering moving from one market to another should keep this effort in mind as an example of what it takes (look at Oracle's multiple attempts to move into the collaboration market, and listen to how Cisco is now talking about collaboration, Web 2.0, etc). This is not an easy journey. Even for Microsoft - the journey ends in one way and begins in others - when the products are actually available for production environments, Microsoft will need to quickly respond to deployment and adoption issues in a rapid fashion - I don't believe UC customers will be as receptive to the 3 years release cycles we see from other product groups.
I am a little more optimistic than Mark on OCS deployment:
- OCS will require a good deal of initial analysis by IT groups so I do not expect OCS 2007 to be rapidly deployed for many reasons (e.g., time spent on architecture and infrastructure planning, organizational readiness, maturity concerns, gaps in interoperability, or migration/coexistence issues).
- Deployment of OCS 2007 will be slower than expected within Microsoft shops because of other projects (Office SharePoint Server 2007) that sap IT resources and raise overall change management concerns.
- Initial rollouts are also likely to parallel existing capabilities (e.g., IM and presence). Organizations will then “turn on” additional OCS 2007 capabilities based on business requirements and OCS maturity assessment.
- A critical mass in the market for large-scale OCS 2007 deployments that include all the bells and whistles will not begin to occur until 2H 2008 (note: I'm a little earlier than Mark).
- “Green field” deployments in the small and medium-size business market will outpace those within large enterprises simply due to a less complex IT environment.
Still, congratulations are in order. There's a lot more attention being paid to this space because of the ecosystem Microsoft tends to establish when it enters a market. In some ways, all boats rise (even those that are delivering competitive alternatives).
Gates To Keynote Unified Communications Launch
Microsoft plans to rollout finished versions of several communications products and discuss future plans at an October 16 event in San Francisco headlined by founder and chairman Bill Gates.
The event is being billed as the formal launch of the software giant's Unified Communications lineup, which includes its Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 and the RoundTable videoconferencing system. OCS brings together several technologies, including VoIP, presence, instant messaging and conferencing.
.....
Burton Group senior analyst Mark Cortner said RoundTable looks like a good value proposition because it offers a price point closer to traditional fixed room systems from companies like Polycom and Tandberg. "And it doesn't have the heavy bandwidth requirements of high-end telepresence systems," he told InternetNews.com.
As for OCS, Cortner thinks Microsoft should and probably is taking a long view in its plans to gain significant traction with enterprise customers.
"When you talk about unified communications in the enterprise, the challenge for OCS is that it crosses so many boundaries such as security, telephony, video and desktop and collaborative applications. We might be talking about four to five different groups in an organization," he said. "Microsoft doesn't necessarily have relationships with these people, particularly telecom, which has to give its approval."
He also notes that OCS is a new platform and most enterprise customers don't rush in to buy the latest technology. "The general rule I hear from these customers when it's a new platform is to wait for the equivalent of a service pack or update after the initial release," he said. "I'm sure Microsoft will have early adopters and pioneers, but more broadly speaking, I wouldn't expect OCS on the budgets of large enterprises till 2009."
Thought you might be interested to read Cisco CEO John Chambers' first written blog entry. Topic: collaboration. He's done a few video blogs, but this is his first written.
You can view his blog on Cisco's new collaboration blog here: http://blogs.cisco.com/collaboration/.
He states, in part: “We are on the cusp of a new era where the Internet is transforming businesses large and small, and creating an entirely new environment for today’s workforce to communicate, collaborate and achieve. We have an opportunity to usher in a new era of economic growth and productivity and Internet-driven collaboration technologies are at the core of this transformation.”
Posted by: John Earnhardt | October 10, 2007 at 08:00 PM