Tweet

The Unified Communications market has twisted and turned over the past eighteen months, thanks to mobile and cloud computing plus the huge uptick in web plus video collaboration. This market has recovered from the 2009/2010 downturn with a gusto as providers expand UC to include collaboration and mobile platforms while targeting the red hot Small- to Medium-sized Enterprise (SME) market that consist of some seven million employees. With only a third of SMEs having a communication strategy plus less than a quarter with a deployed UC solution, the SME market is huge and wide open. In this Lippis Report Research Note, we take a look at Avaya’s and Siemens’ new UC offering for the SME market from a traditional voice vendor perspective and explore non-traditional SME offerings from Apple, Google, Facebook, Cisco, Microsoft, et al.

The UC market is no longer. It use to be that UC was defined as an integrated launch point for a wide range of communication services, such as real-time voice, voice-mail access, text messaging packages, etc. Then the stock market crashed and slowed down UC growth. During 2009 and 2010, mobile and cloud computing took off and fundamentally changed enterprise computing and communications. Companies took to video communications as a way to both cut travel and operational cost while improving productivity. Case in point, Camp Dress McKee, a worldwide player in water treatment design and build, consolidated their real estate offices, thanks to centralizing engineering and getting close to customer projects though outpost or smaller offices. High definition video conferencing was the enabler of this operational transformation.

UC vendors took note and started changing their UC platforms to embrace BYOD or mobile end points, collaboration and video. The UC market is now a mUCC market for Mobile, Unified Communications and Collaboration. Yes, some are experimenting with cloud-based UC offerings, but with mixed results, so we defer on this topic for now. As with most other economic recoveries, small business usually leads the way. This time around is no different, and the mUCC vendor community is targeting this market segment with a vengeance.

Note that some think that iPhones or Android devices are all that is needed in the SME. But this solution does not scale past a few employees, as business critical communications need reliability and quality. Try closing a deal over a mobile phone or transferring calls between employees or conducting group calls, and it becomes abundantly clear that a first-rate company needs a first-rate communications system that includes fixed, mobile and conference solutions.

While we use the “m” in mUCC to denote mobility, this is just a point of emphasis that mobility is now being integrated into the UCC environment, and it by no means is to be construed that fixed endpoints are not part of SME solution. For this Lippis Report Research Note, we focus on the new mUCC market for SME. To do so, we profile Avaya’s and Siemens’ latest launches.

Avaya offers a few options for SME, such as the IP Office, which it has been busy consolidating multiple products from the Nortel acquisition. In addition, it recently announced the availability of Avaya Flare® Communicator for iPad as a download from the Apple App Store. Avaya Flare Communicator is a free software application for both iPad and its own Android-based Avaya Desktop Video Device (ADVD). Avaya Flare Communicator provides secure mUCC capabilities over Wi-fi and 3G networks.

Avaya Flare Communicator for the iPad is enabled by the Avaya Aura® 6.1 UC architecture, which delivers integrated applications to a range of fixed and mobile devices, providing consistency between mobile and fixed endpoints. Some of its capabilities are integrated enterprise directory to easily launch IM, voice call or email. While being mobile, manage two simultaneous voice calls using the iPad, multi-tasking real time communications with internet access. Reduce mobile expenses by using the data channel and avoiding roaming charges while traveling across different cellular networks

Siemens Enterprise Communications offers its all-in-one mUCC suite with recent updates to improve mobility, increasing business efficiency and lowering costs for SME. The upgrades to OpenScape Office and the HiPath 3000 voice platform include a new UC client for tablets, OpenScape Web Collaboration and a UC plug-in for Microsoft Outlook 2010. According to Siemens, these solutions help SMBs better serve their customers and reduce communications costs.

OpenScape Office has been designed to support the increased use of smart phones and tablets, offering a new mobility UC client that extends desktop capabilities to mobile endpoints. In addition, OpenScape Web collaboration has been extended to OpenScape Office MX and LX plus mobile phones and tablets. Unique to Siemens is its embrace of virtualizing its mUCC applications. The
OpenScape Office LX and HX can now run on VMware.

From a user point of view, OpenScape Office is now equipped with a UC plug-in for Outlook 2010, and Open Directory Service that enables access to corporate directories for ease of access. Siemens has had great success with OpenScape Office, having seen it grown some 67% last year.

While we just provide a snapshot of Siemens and Avaya here, Cisco, ShoreTel, Mitel, Microsoft and others offer SME mUCC solutions too. Interestingly here is that Google, Apple Facebook and Microsoft are all positioning to play a larger role in the SME mUCC market. Google offers a suite of services that integrate across desktop and mobile devices leveraging Android, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Messenger, Google Voice, Gmail Google Video, and of course circles, et al. Microsoft has been challenged with Lynx as a voice platform, but it now owns Skype, and look for it to offer a mUCC suite for the SME. Facebook is a wild card as rumors circulate that it’s working on a Facebook OS for mobile devices that some project will offer a social mUCC platform.

Apple seems contempt to ride the BYOD trend into the enterprise market without packaging a SME mUCC solution. Apple continues to push the envelope and deliver many of the features promised by the UC vendors for years, such as FaceTime and Siri. The real opportunity for the traditional mUCC vendors is to embrace Apple’s iPad, iPhone and MAC, adding enterprise strength and scale to FaceTime, Siri, contacts, calendar, icloud, etc. Most of the mUCC vendors still view Apple as a consumer device and opt more often than not to develop on Android. That is a mistake.

The SME market is the huge opportunity for the mUCC vendors, but it’s also an opportunity for non-traditional players too, as only 25% of the market has decided upon its mUCC direction. Siemens and Avaya as well as many of the other vendors are all moving in the right direction to integrate mobility, video and collaboration. But some Big Data analytics may very well show all that is needed is enterprise integration plus scale to Apple and Google mobile endpoints on desktop and fixed point phones.

Tweet

The UC market is rapidly moving toward a cloud service for the small to medium business (SMB) market, thanks to Siemens Enterprise Communications and others offering powerful communications and office productivity software delivered as a service. Cloud services offer the SMB market with some of the same IT services that large enterprises enjoy, but without the complexity and cost. For example, Siemens has been working with Google to offer its OpenScape Cloud Service that integrates features into Google applications, like click to call/conference, etc. In this Lippis Report podcast, I talk with Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, about the SMB market and how its OpenScape Cloud Services is offering new, innovative solutions that allows these firms to be more competitive and agile.

Listen to the Podcast

Tweet

In mid May of this year HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Logitech / LifeSize and Polycom established a forum to develop a set of interoperability test methodologies and certification programs along with specifications and guidelines that enable mixed vendor Unified Communications UC solutions to work with each other. In short, the UC Interoperability Forum or UCIF is trying to define what it means for multi-vendor UC implementations to interoperate. Since its establishment, membership has grown by thirteen vendors, but blaringly obvious is the omission of Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, ShoreTel and other major UC providers. This begs the question of motivation. Is the UCIF interested in interoperability or changing the market landscape to gain advantage on the established leaders? In this Lippis Report Research Note we explore this question.

UC interoperability is a very big deal. In fact, back in early April of this year, Zeus Kerravala, SVP of the Yankee Group and I addressed this issue in a Lippis Report podcast titled What is Holding UC Back?. Our answer was lack of interoperability standards and the vendor community’s minimal interest of embracing the ones we have. The UC market has evolved in a peculiar way as it brings together traditional voice communication companies, data networking firms, computing corporations and software concerns. UC is now at the epicenter of video communications, social networking and mobile computing too. UC represents one of the largest cross sections of disparate markets second only to the Internet. It’s here, within this cross section, that UC gains its enormous value.

UC offers to control real time communications and collaboration. Put another way, all real time business processes will be accessed and control by UC over time. Need to call a colleague? It’s via your UC client. Need to schedule a meeting? It’s via your UC calendar client. Need to video chat with a customer? It’s via your UC video client. Need to bring a group of people together for an emergency meeting? Yes, you guessed it! It is via your UC collaboration client. And common to all those UC clients is presence enabled directory to you, so you can find someone and know if they are available, a communications management system that sets up and tears down connections over intranet, internet and mobile nets. To make UC work ubiquitously, like the public telephone network or the Internet, the vendor community needs a forum or place where it can work out interoperability standards. In addition, for this next evolution in human communications to live up to its promise, it needs motivated vendors to allow their equipment to work together.

Yes, UC does have key interoperability standards such as SIP or Session Initiation Protocol that offer both end-point and communications manager interoperability, but many vendors add proprietary extensions to SIP reducing its value in multi-vendor networks. So the UCIF is to be applauded for taking the first step in creating an organization among the vendor community to usher in an era of interoperable UC. But the problem with UCIF is which companies established its formation. Clearly suppliers are businesses looking for sustainable competitive advantage that comes with large market share and innovative, albeit proprietary technologies. It’s no surprise then that when UCIF is established by firms with limited UC market share one’s mind jumps to the obvious assumption that the founding members of the UCIF are perhaps more interested in market share re-distribution than interoperability.

I’ve observed many industry forums and consortiums in the past that used interoperability as a convenient cause to hide a group’s true intentions. For example, Bay Networks, 3Com and IBM established the Network Interoperability Alliance or NIA in May of 1996 to foster interoperability between Local Area Network (LAN) switch vendors. NIA had limited success in competing with Cisco’s increasing market share gains of the enterprise router and switch market.

UCIF feels a lot like NIA to me. The shear fact that it’s mission statement, board and legal structure was done without any of the UC market leaders input and participation is unfortunate, as it has alienated them. It’s also unfortunate that Polycom and LifeSize are founding UCIF partners, but Cisco/Tandberg is not involved as this has a hint of Polycom/LifeSize fear of Cisco breaking away with the Telepresence market; UCIF seems like a way of mitigating this threat. The timing is very close with Cisco closing the Tandberg acquisition in April and UCIF being launched in May.

If UCIF is not able to entice and recruit Cisco, Avaya, Mitel, and ShoreTel et al in a meaningful and authoritative way, then its fate may very well be the same as NIA. What the industry does need is true interoperability standards so that a Cisco, Avaya, Microsoft, Siemens, HP et al UC implementations are able to work with each other in the same way that multi-vendor email systems work with each other. But without full industry participation, it seems that UCIF may be doomed and not able to deliver on its promise of interoperability. For UCIF to be meaningful it needs the UC market leaders full participation as well as Enterprise IT architects and planners plus service providers too, for without them, UCIF is NIA.

Tweet

The Unified Communications (UC) market is changing significantly in terms of how solutions are deployed, services are packaged and systems procured. Siemens addressed all of these areas in one fell swoop with the recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010. Siemens announced new licensing options for endpoints and integrated UC endpoint services in packaged solutions including social media plug-ins such as Twitter. Kathy Heilmann, Director, Large Enterprise Voice and UC Solutions Marketing at Siemens Enterprise Communications joined me to talk about the new rules of UC procurement and its value to IT business leaders.

Listen to the Podcast

Tweet

By Aberdeen Group

With so many potential points of contact: desk phones, soft phones, voice messaging, e-mail, video conferencing, texting, social media, mobile devices etc., how can we ever actually be reached within a reasonable timeframe? How does UC transform an organization’s communications infrastructure, improve efficiency, optimize work processes, and provide for business continuity and compliance? To find out, in February and March 2010, Aberdeen Group surveyed 184 organizations in more then 28 countries around the world. This paper is the result of that effort.

Find out what Aberdeen learned by downloading this whitepaper.

Get the White Paper

Tweet

In their recently released OpenScape UC Server 2010, Siemens has incorporated application virtualization allowing UC applications such as OpenScape Voice, OpenScape Branch, OpenScape Media Server etc., to load on standard compute hardware avoiding the installation, configuration and maintenance of running multiple complex software stacks, operating systems and applications. Paul McMillan, Director UC Technical Vision & Strategy at Siemens Enterprise Communications, joins me to talk about what virtualization in a UC environment delivers to IT business leaders as we dive into the details of UC Server 2010.
Find out by listening to this podcast.

Listen to the Podcast

Tweet

By Siemens Enterprise Communications

This White Paper provides a comprehensive overview of the Virtualization plans for the Siemens Enterprise Communications OpenScape UC Server 2010 and for OpenScape UC Suite. Virtualization takes yet another step in our evolution to a pure software architecture and to match current and emerging strategies in the IT industry.
Siemens Enterprise continues to pursue Open Solutions for our customers and is using Open Virtualization Format  (OVF) and Virtual-Appliance software-solution approach for platform-independent virtualization of all the products, and to deliver on our message of Open Communications. Siemens Enterprise continues to lead the evolution of real-time UC-based communications by delivering innovative and customer-centric solutions with measurable financial benefits.

Find out how by downloading this Siemens whitepaper.

Get the White Paper

Tweet

This past Interop in Las Vegas was one of the best I have attended, since even before the economy took a noise dive in 2008. The tone and level of excitement of the industry’s growth potential was refreshingly up beat from the hundreds of IT and vendor executives I talked with. While the size of Interop is a small fraction of what it was in the late 1990s, (70k attendees with over 600 exhibitors to ~ 15K attendees with ~ 200 exhibitors) it still provides a pulse of the networking industry. In fact, Interop has come full circle, back to being a networking event even though it has added other topics. You have to give Dan Lynch credit for creating such a long lasting venue for our industry. Congratulations to Cisco, Arista Networks, HP/3Com, Mallonx for winning best of show in their respective categories and for Arista for winning Best of Interop. In this Lippis Report Research Note I provide the key industry themes that were evident at Interop this year.

The following are my observations of Interop 2010 in LV.

Network Infrastructure Takes Center Stage: Even though Interop provided attendees with thirteen educational content areas including cloud computing, IT security, Enterprise 2.0, etc., it’s the changes taking place in the network infrastructure business that was front and center, loud and clear. The following was the topic of conversations throughout Interop:

• Cisco’s introduction of its Best of Show winning Aironet 3500 Series Access Point with CleanAir technology,
• Arista Networks’ introduction of and winning Best of Show and Best of Interop for its Arista 7500 10Gb modular Ethernet cloud computing switch,
• HP’s closing of its acquisition of 3Com and winning Best of Show for its TippingPoint Virtual Controller,
• HP’s planned acquisition of Palm,
• Avaya’s reassertion in the network business with the introduction of its Ethernet Routing Switch 8800, WLAN 8100 and Advanced Gateway 2330,
• Voltaire’s new Vantage™ 8500, 10 GbE Layer 2 core Ethernet switch,
• Force10’s open network automation demonstrations and 40GbE module

With the above announcements and accomplishments, two thoughts come to mind. First is that Interop is finally back to core networking issues, and second, the above announcements provide a window into the huge changes that are taking place in our industry.

New Industry Structure Emerges: The networking industry has been consolidating for some time now and will only continue. Corporations have some $2T in cash and equivalents on their books, which will be put to work acquiring companies and investing in growth markets. The big growth market in our industry is the fundamental change IT is starting to progress through. HP’s actions last week provided a preview of what’s to come.

HP stole the headlines last week with their shorter then expected closing of their 3Com acquisition, in addition to their intent to purchase Palm. HP realizes that the IT industry is structurally changing away from fixed desktop computing accessing corporate applications hosted in data centers, to mobile computing accessing applications hosted in corporate data centers and cloud computing facilities. The big winner in this transition is networking, as without it, cloud and mobile computing will not happen. Palm gives HP a smartphone platform to participate in the mobile computing market while 3Com expands its corporate networking portfolio significantly.

HP vs Cisco: The buzz at Interop around HP was how it will compete with Cisco. The HP executives and booth personnel were the most energized I have ever seen. HP views their competitive advantage along the lines of innovation, open network architecture and economics. Thinking it through however, HP’s focus will be more on supply chain efficiencies to drive down their cost of producing networking gear close to server economics while leveraging their massive and productive channel to gain market share.

The supply chain efficiency is a great idea, but will take at least a year if not more to deliver. The thinking here is that a 40 Watt power supply is the same, independent of its final designation, as long as it powers a server, router, etc. So can HP redesign their product lines for common components where they gain huge cost efficiency thanks to volume purchasing? Perhaps, but this will take time. Their channel strength should deliver results in the short term. If HP executives are correct and that the market wants a strong number two networking provider, then its channel should produce fairly quickly. If it doesn’t, then this premise is questionable. HP networking is about $5B now; if it doesn’t grow faster then the industry by a significant amount next year, then something is wrong.

Remember HP is competing with a $40B powerhouse that is Cisco Systems, which has a massive and productive channel too that are energized to sell, not only networking gear, but also unified communications, Cisco’s new server platform UCS and video equipment. As for innovation, HP is a great operational company therefore expect them to take cost out of their products. Nevertheless, Cisco is the innovation king, thanks to its systemic incorporation of innovation in product development, plus its ability to integrate acquisitions quickly and materially. Cisco does not only innovate in its products, but around them, offering architected solutions. Examples of this are everywhere, including its borderless network architecture, EnergyWise, UCS, the new 3000 series stackables, Power over Ethernet Plus, its’ ISR G2, the Nexus line of data center switches, its’ approach to integrated network security, etc.

Here’s an example of the power of innovation. A client and Lippis Report subscriber has funded a new $20M data center. During their due diligence, they visited Dell, HP, IBM and Cisco. This CIO will go with Cisco’s UCS. The reason is that during the customer visit, Cisco first described the major direction and trends in data center virtualization and cloud computing in such a way that my client said “Cisco looked into the future and designed UCS to exploit these changes while all the other vendors were selling their old blade systems”. Now this is significant, as this CIO only purchased equipment from market share leaders, that is, he would buy from HP for servers, Dell for desktop systems, Cisco for networking, Avaya for communications etc. Cisco’s innovation in UCS changed his long-standing principal of buying only from market share leaders and will buy UCS for this new data center. So the basis of competition between Cisco and HP will fall into three categories; innovation, supply chain management and channel productivity.

A Mobile and Cloud Computing IT Model Is Disrupting The Status Quo

The Interop announcements above were aligned with this new world order of IT. For example, Arista Networks delivers a massively powerful 10GE switch for cloud spec data centers and high performance data center environments. Clearly investment in cloud infrastructure is a growth market which motivated Voltaire to enter the Ethernet market and leverage its Infiniband experience to deliver converged I/O for both Infiniband and Fiber Channel Over Ethernet (FCoE). As computing is in a rapid technology innovation stage thanks to server virtualization, networking has lagged in its ability to automate network changes brought on by VM moves. This has motivated Force10, F5 and Infoblox to demonstrate innovative approaches to automating network changes so that network administrators do not have to be involved in the process of VM moves and/or the provisioning of new IT services as demand is increased and/or decreased.

It’s clear that HP networking products has gained awareness and will receive consideration. As HP opens the consideration door, Avaya wishes to enter too with its refreshed and new data networking products. Avaya is now lead by experienced IP networking executives that understand voice and data. The Nortel channel also understands voice and data. Ever since Avaya closed its acquisition of Nortel, those channel partners that put selling Nortel gear on hold, have started to come back. They are comfortable now as stability, R&D funding and a strong financially viable company has emerged.

The networking industry is an upside down pyramid with Cisco at the top followed by a few others in the billion-dollar range. Then there are a number of $100M sized firms followed by a few start-ups. The successful firms will be the ones that embrace the new world order of IT that is being brought on as IT leaders de-emphasizes desktop computing and invest in mobile plus cloud computing.

Tweet

During a podcast with Zeus Kerravala of the Yankee Group, we came to the conclusion that the unified communications market is in a funk and the only way out is for suppliers to adhere to industry standards that allow interoperability. To demonstrate this achievement, UC providers would be well advised to participate in industry wide interoperability testing. In this Lippis Report, we discuss the issues that are holding back UC and video conferencing adoption.

It’s important to understand that standards and interoperability mean different things. A supplier can be open, but not standards based. A supplier can be standards based, and not open. And then a supplier can be standards based and build a range of extensions to the standard, which then makes their implementation nonstandard. And this is where the UC industry is right now. Nearly every supplier will tout how open they are; that is how standards based they are, but what it all comes down to is we really don’t have a common standard UC that allows IT business leaders to deploy UC solutions and work in a mixed vendor and service provider environment. This is the single most important issue to IT business leaders that is creating pause in their UC deployments and extending sales cycles.

It’s disappointing. Our industry has been developing UC since 1996. It seems as if UC suppliers are not ready to implement standards based UC solutions, as they haven’t figured out how to maneuver as the basis of competition changes toward interoperable UC. The question is if a UC supplier makes their offering open and interoperable will they lose important functionality and compete on features above standard UC services?

The UC market is built primarily off of a telecom heritage in which none of the PBX phone system vendors had interest in interoperable solutions, and as a result, the PBX market was frozen with 30% share each going to Lucent/Avaya, Nortel and Siemens for decades. Voice over IP or VoIP thawed that market by radically changing it with a new approach to voice and based upon the openness of IP.

It’s because of this PBX heritage that many of the suppliers view being open and truly standards based as a threat. Thinking this way masks the bigger picture. UC suppliers are missing the larger picture, which is this. If UC endpoints truly worked as plug-n-play, and IT business leaders knew that whatever UC systems they deployed would interact and work with different UC suppliers, then UC usage would go through the roof. The market would expand and service providers could offer standard UC services too.

The big picture of plug and play universal UC would change market share. Perhaps large suppliers would have a lower percentage of share, but of a much bigger addressable market and associated dollar value. In short, the pie would get much bigger. In addition, the big picture would create a much larger UC ecosystem, with more winners than the current industry structure, and that is healthy.

Point in case. Most IT business leaders have relationships and large investment with both Cisco and Microsoft. Many Lippis Report subscribers voice concern that they can’t get their Cisco and Microsoft UC solutions to work properly together. If two of the largest vendors in the UC space don’t work together, than what hope do most IT leaders have of actually getting their UC investments to work in a mixed vendor environment?

This is systemic, because without adherence to basic UC standards overall market size, growth rates, adoption rates and adjacent markets will be limited. A closely aligned UC adjacent market is video communications. While there are companies promoting various different standards, there’s no interoperability within the three-tier enterprise video communications structure. The three-tiers are 1) desktop video, 2) a pedestrian video conferencing system and 3) Telepresence rooms. There are little to no standards that would allow different vendors to be providing each of the three-tiers and offer users the same simple set-up that allows video communications to work between the three tiers. Today’s solution is to buy a single vendor, but no video conferencing supplier offers all three-tiers. Cisco may soon offer all three tiers thanks to their Tandberg acquisition, but Microsoft still owns the desktop and they are not opening up their RTA/RTE protocol any time soon.

Another closely aligned UC adjacent market are smartphones, such as the iPhone, Android, blackberry, the Palm Pre etc. There are only limited UC extensions being offered to mobile endpoints but they lack standards, presence, directory and fixed mobile convergence

In short, the biggest drawback is that it’s too hard to get systems, sometimes-even systems from the same vendor to talk to each other. Getting different systems from different vendors to talk to each other is nearly non-existent today. The directory problem is a huge industry problem, because it’s very different to know who has video communications and who doesn’t. Think of it in terms of telephony. I know you’ve got a phone and a phone number that I can call you on. I know you’ve got an email address. However, I don’t know if you have video, and if I do, I don’t know how to connect to you. So, if that barrier doesn’t fall, video will remain a niche application with relatively low utilization even though high definition video and Telepresence utilization has increased substantially during the downturn.

We are calling the telecos to task on this. The telecos hold a lot of the keys to success because video conferencing systems are connect over teleco networks, which is the perfect place to apply interoperability standards. And while a number of telecos now support inter-company Telepresence on their own backbone, they need to step that up and provide inter-company video cross-backbone, and be willing to work with all video conferencing providers.

Again, here’s the case where the telecos probably look at this interoperable video service as threatening, in that they don’t want to open their network up and allow other provides to provide service with our network. Yet if they did, usage would go up and everybody would benefit. So the network operators really need to step up here.

The big picture plug and play model of UC will change business models. As the industry becomes open and standards based, truly standards based, an innovative ecosystem will flourish. Money flows will shift as the big picture UC market becomes much more ISV (independent software vendor) driven. In this model, from a vendor perspective, what’s important is less about the tools you have or the applications you provide, and more about your willingness to support the ecosystem that surrounds you and the development tools you provide them. In essence, the developer community winds up leading your organization.

This is a big shift. In the world of applications, the platform is the important asset and how a company supports its ecosystem will become a key basis of competition and a barrier of entry, as there are only a limited number of ISVs. The open UC market will move the value proposition to one of a platform delivering innovative UC applications. In this model, revenue generation shifts where money comes from and how vendors get it. Avaya understands it very well, with its Dev Connect community, Cisco with its CDN and Siemens with its UC Server 2010 UC platform, but all suppliers need to put much more energy into open standards and going to market through a developer ecosystem.

To accelerate the industry to the big picture UC market expansion, the industry needs to embrace a public semi-annual interoperability testing and demonstration event. It was this public testing that drove TCP/IP into the success of the Internet with the industry trade show and conference called Interop. We need a UC Interop to move this technology to mainstream.

Tweet

This is the question that Zeus Kerravala, SVP of the Yankee Group and I address in the Lippis Report podcast. Here’s a hint, lack of standards and the vendor community’s lack of interest of embracing the ones we have. Post your ideas on twitter with the following hash mark #UCINTEROP.

Listen to the Podcast