Enterprises Getting Serious About UC Interoperability
Enterprises Getting Serious About UC Interoperability by David Yedwab
I have been up front about advocating UC interoperability for several years and, at this week’s Enterprise Connect conference, “the pigeons came home to roost.” 300 individuals attended the session entitled, “Unified Communications Interoperability – What’s Needed.” You might say, “Why is that significant?” Well, the session was held at 8 a.m. on the third day of the conference; I’ve been instigating sessions on interoperability at both Enterprise Connect (and its VoiceCon predecessor) as well as IT EXPOs for at least three years and the sessions were never attended by more than a few handfuls of people. So, why now? Perhaps it was the firms represented by our six panelists – a veritable who’s who of the industry representing most approaches and sections of the space - Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, NEC, NET and RIM. Perhaps it was the session description and content from Marty Parker, my co-moderator. Maybe it is just my charm, but that had not worked before <wink>.
Actually, being a good researcher, I drew my conclusion from speaking with several attendees right after the session. My conclusion is that Enterprises are now serious (coming out of the recession and hearing the promises of the many providers)about purchasing UC solutions, but they want to be certain that their selection of specific vendors’ solutions will work together as well as work smoothly with their installed base of systems. They want to know that these systems can not only communicate inside the enterprise but also, securely and multi-modally across their supply chain and, increasingly, with customers. And these communications must cover the range of IM, presence, voice, desktop sharing, and video – both fixed and mobile - as appropriate to the applications. Also, it needs to be easy for the user to make it work and for the IT team to support it. And they aren’t comfortable that it is neither the current state of solution evolution nor on anyone’s roadmap going forward.
So, did the session accomplish the goal? Are users now comfortable? And, will they speed up their purchases? Frankly, I’m afraid that I would have to answer, “No.” The vendors need to step up to the plate, across the board, to make UC interoperability as easy as placing a telephone call or sending an e-mail message virtually anywhere in the world, with well understood user interfaces from any device whether fixed or mobile. We are making progress, as my co-moderator noted. Key use cases can be identified in most enterprises, for which sufficient interoperation exists to enable successful UC deployments. Yet, the challenges for the vendors and service providers across the Unified Communications space are to broaden those successfully implemented use cases into standard solutions available to all. How the industry will go about meeting this challenge is yet to be answered...hopefully both the standards bodies and other industry forums will rapidly come together and deliver on the promises.