Microsoft

Google Ripples Market With Announcement of Wave

At the Google I/O conference Google unveiled a revolutionary new collection of communication and collaboration tools dubbed “Wave”. Wave seems to be a very ambitious project from Google which potentially impacts both the unified communications and collaboration players including Microsoft, Cisco, Avaya, IBM, and others, but also provides some potential competition for Microsoft Office as well.

Wave, as it was demoed at Google I/O, is still in the early stages of development. You can watch the demo from Google I/O. It is an hour and twenty minutes long though so clear your calendar and get a pot of coffee going. Techcrunch provides a detailed look at and review of Google Wave.

What do you think? Does Google Wave have what it takes to upset the unified communications industry? What about Microsoft Office Wave 14? Did Google tip their hand early enough for Microsoft developers to jump on some of the Wave innovations and try to incorporate them before the next version of Office is released?

Microsoft and HP Form Unified Communications Alliance

Microsoft has established itself as a leader in the unified communications market, but their focus on the software side of things means that they don’t have an end-to-end solution. The up side for customers is that Microsoft does not lock you into using specific or proprietary hardware. That is what allows Microsoft to run marketing campaigns like “VoIP As You Are”.

The down side is that Microsoft does not provide the desk phones and other related hardware so they have to make sure they are forging alliances with companies that do to ensure that there are quality hardware products that are designed for and certified compatible with Microsoft Office Communications Server and the Microsoft Unified Communications platform.

According to this article from InformationWeek, Microsoft and HP announced a partnership to merge their resources in an effort to build an end-to-end unified communications solution and continue to battle Cisco and IBM for UC market share.

Using Virtual Meetings to Fight Recessions and Pandemics

Companies love to have meetings. In my experience, the bigger the company, the more they like to meet. While working for a Fortune 100 IT services company I once had more than 20 hours of my work week filled with recurring meetings. In other words, more than half of my available time each week was spent meeting about what to do instead of going and doing it.

One of the reasons companies like meetings is that there is an assumption that there is some greater camaraderie or synergy developed from the face to face interaction. Do you know what else is greater in a face to face interaction? Germs. Meetings are typically in enclosed spaces and involve handshaking, sharing documents, and other physical interactions that can result in spreading germs.

Some meetings are just local team meetings, but often customers, vendors, partners, or managers fly in from across the country or around the world to participate in meetings. Those trips incur travel costs, lodging, meals, rental cars, etc. Hopefully some Earth-shattering information is covered at the meeting to justify the costs.

In this time of economic recession and with the emerging threat of the potential pandemic of H1N1 (swine flu), organizations should re-examine the value provided by these face to face meetings. The fact is, the same meeting can be conducted and the same results achieved without the travel or germs. Joe Schurman agrees with this mentality in his recent post Swine Flu + Recession = Microsoft Office Live Meeting.

Evangelyze Communications Revolutionizes UC with SmartSIP

SmartSIP is officially here! In the official press release Simon Booth, Director of Research & Development for Evangelyze Communications, says “SmartSIP is designed for extending the Microsoft UC platform to industry standard SIP connectivity (UDP) while minimizing the maintenance and administration overhead by leveraging Microsoft’s Active Directory and OCS configuration.”

Check out this video overview of SmartSIP to learn why this product is so revolutionary, then visit the Evangelyze Communications site to get more details and figure out how to use SmartSIP to change communications in your organization.

SmartSIP - So Simple a Kid Can Understand It

One of  the most anticipated innovations in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 was the introduction of the ability to connect OCS directly to a SIP trunk. One caveat to that excitement was that Microsoft only provides that connectivity with two chosen SIP trunk providers. That seriously limits the potential of direct SIP trunking.

Evangelyze Communications is coming to the rescue though with SmartSIP. SmartSIP enables organizations to connect OCS with….wait. I can’t possibly explain SmartSIP any better than this video overview. The clip is less than a minute long and well worth the time. Check it out for yourself.

Microsoft Unified Communications Virtual User Group

What exemplifies the spirit of unified communications more than a virtual user group?

The Microsoft Unified Communications Virtual User Group (UCVUG) has been established with the stated purpose ”to provide resources, education, and collaboration to professionals who are interested in Microsoft Unified Communications products.”

The group, which is not officially sanctioned by Microsoft, will meet on a quarterly basis online via Microsoft virtual meeting tools such as Live Meeting. Membership is free and you can join by filling out a simple registration form.  

The group’s first meeting is scheduled for May 21st at 7pm Eastern time and will feature a presentation from Evangelyze Communications’ Mike Stacy. Stacy will discuss Evangelyze Communications innovative SmartSIP product that extends Microsoft OCS connectivity to virtually any SIP trunk provider and any SIP phone / device.

Perzonae Looks to Enter UC Arena

A Dutch startup called Perzonae Unified Communications entered the battle for unified communications market share with the release this week of the public beta version of their service.

The service combines email and instant messaging and Perzonae has plans to incorporate voice capabilities when the official release is made available. According to the article Perzonae feels their product can replace Outlook, Thunderbird, MSN / Live email, Hotmail, Skype, and GMail among others. Seems like a pretty tall order for a startup to take on Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google all before their product is even officially released.

The official release is not expected for another 6 months or so and the beta only runs on Windows XP- so they have some work to do. I don’t think that a company or product like this provides any serious concern to Microsoft or other enterprise-class unified communications providers. It remains to be seen what Perzonae will bring to the table and whether consumers or smaller businesses might be willing to pay Perzonae for services they can currently get for free using Windows Live Messenger or Google’s services such as GMail or Google Talk.

BT Extends UC Functionality with Finder

BT, a leading global IT consultancy and service provider and a key partner for Microsoft Unified Communications, has developed an innovative new tool that extends the functionality of Microsoft Office Communications Server.

BT’s Finder utility allows users of Microsoft Unified Communications to determine how and when communications get to them. Finder can be configured to filter communications based on specified criteria and reroute them to other users or groups while a user is away on business or out on vacation. Urgent or critical communications can be automatically converted from email text to speech and forwarded to voicemail or to a mobile phone in order to communicate with users without immediate access to email. 

Finder accelerates delivery of critical information to the right person at the right time. It allows users to focus on business issues while the system handles presence, preference and device attributes in the background. In addition, Finder is another illustration of the impact of software-powered voice and the potential that exists when communications can be managed in a way that improves efficiency and enhances productivity.

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.

A Recipe for Success

Remember when Cisco was a network hardware company? Cisco and networking were virtually synonymous and you knew who to call if you needed a router or a switch. Once upon a time, Avaya was a provider of enterprise communications equipment. If you needed phones or maybe an IP PBX, you could call Avaya. In days gone by Microsoft focused on server and desktop operating systems and developing software applications to help businesses be more productive. Ah, the good ole days.

To be fair, each of those companies still does what it used to. But, now the waters are muddy as they all try to be all things to all customers. As Joe Schurman, CEO of Evangelyze Communications and author of Microsoft Voice and Unified Communications, points out in his musings from Voicecon 2009, nobody was content with their piece of the pie and now they all want to be the whole pie.

The thing is, none of them really have ALL of the ingredients necessary to make the best pie. If I could only buy a pie from one company I would get my pie from Microsoft because they have the most complete list of ingredients. I might need to top it off with some additional ingredients like SmartSIP, but the Microsoft Unified Communications platform offers the most comprehensive and innovative features in the most cost effective and flexible solution of the major players.

That said, these vendors and the customers both benefit when they stop competing to be the whole pie and instead focus on how to integrate their ingredients to cooperate to make the best pie possible. A Microsoft Unified Communications platform using Avaya or Nortel communications equipment connected to a Cisco network infrastructure seems like a recipe for success.

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