Let’s look at Unified Communication (UC) from the eyes of
three different players:
1) Infrastructure:
- Telecom Infra: Avaya/Nortel/Ericsson/Alcatel
Let’s take the Telecom infra companies. Their premise for UC
is that they have owned Telecom all along and they know what
communication is about. ISDN in some sense was their version of UC.
They have been doing this for years and it is only natural that the
next generation of communication would be best understood by them.
It is all about ‘consumer communication’ to
them.
Network Infra: Cisco/Juniper
- The Network Infra players have a different idea. Their argument
is if you say that ‘IP’ is going to be the platform for
communication in the years ahead, who else is better equipped to
handle this than the ‘data’ players.
When John Chambers quipped that video adoption would increase the
need for more bandwidth and hence more revenue for Cisco, he was
signaling the intentions of the network infra players. To them, the
next generation communication is all about the
‘pipe’.
2) Enterprise Software: Microsoft/Oracle
For Enterprise Software companies, UC is not about the general
telecom subscribers. It may be in the distant future, but for now,
UC is all about how people communicate to increase
business/productivity.
How would a road warrior be effective in achieving his goals?
How do we make it easier for enterprises to communicate? For these
companies, such questions are relevant in today’s world. For
them, UC is about ‘business
communication’.
3) Web 2.0: Google/Yahoo/Facebook/Skype
And finally, the Web 2.0 folks. They believe that they are the ones
that heralded next generation communication via applications that
connect people. Social networking/Instant
Messaging/Blogging/Micro-blogging have connected people in a major
way in the last few years and they think they deserve to be the
champions in UC. They don’t care too much about the network.
For them ‘applications’ make UC.
Levels of Convergence
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