Gurdeep Singh Pall

Death of the Desk Phone

At Voicecon 2009 in Orlando last week, Microsoft’s Gurdeep Singh Pall, vice president of the unified communications group, pointed out that the desk phone is a ‘dead man walking’. Organizations spend an average of $300 per phone, plus the additional cost of running the necessary cabling and jacks to each desk and the power consumption of having the phones plugged in. For one or two users it may not be a big deal, but for organizations with 500, or 5,000, or 50,000 users the cost adds up quickly.

Microsoft Unified Communications, and using Microsoft Office Communicator to replace the desk phone, enables organizations to eliminate those costs. The computer is already there. It is already plugged in. It already has the necessary cables and connectivity installed. It can perform the same functions as the desk phone and then some, so it is a redundant waste of money to have a phone sitting there next to the computer.

Pall also described some success stories around Microsoft Office Communications Server including Swiss telecommunications company Swisscom. According to this Network World article, Swisscom’s head of collaboration services, Andreas Arrigoni said “The software helped shorten sales cycles by 20% and freed up 20 minutes per person per day with efficiencies that left time to do more work.” He then added “The system also supports federated presence so workers at Swisscom can see whether individuals at partner companies are available and by what means.”

RIP desk phone. It has been nice knowing you.

Cisco Reversing Course?

As unified communications entered into the mainstream consciousness, a few major players emerged. Two of them were Cisco and Microsoft. They have very different visions for what unified communications means and very different approaches to get their customers there.

At one point, they actually called a cease fire of sorts and agreed to cooperate in the interest of the greater good. That amiable agreement was quickly tossed aside though once they started rolling out products and one-upping each other about which is the right way to do it.

Now Gurdeep Singh Pall, the head of Microsoft’s Unified Communications team, offers up some insights in a recent blog post. He claims that Cisco has now seen the error of their ways and that they are shifting gears and reversing course to try and play catch-up with Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform. Recent purchases, like the announcement that Cisco is buying Jabber, seem to support this change of strategy and direction on the part of Cisco.