On the Twelfth day of UC the industry gave to me, figuring out the plumbing,
the value of video, not hyping,
no more pagers beeping,
interface enhancing,
CFOs bilking,
overuse of power dimming,
applications plug ‘n playing,
five phone rings,
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.
Darn. It’s Christmas and I woke up this morning and there was no Cisco TelePresence system under the tree. Sigh. I didn’t have any place to put it anyway, so it’s on to the twelfth day of unified communications.
What would a wish list be without mentioning interoperability and standards? Yes indeed – we need to figure out the plumbing. What customers really want is open interoperability. Now granted, as soon as a standard becomes ratified it becomes closed, and then companies start to add extensions onto it making it non-standard. That is just the nature of the beast. But adhering to the latest generation of standards, or trying to adhere is the only step in the right direction.
In a similar vein, when I was talking to vendors about their wishes, one person said that perhaps one of the biggest impediments to growth in UC is not having VoIP ready networks. That would be nice too. VoIP is part of the plumbing, because its technology that rides underneath the business solutions that customers want and we are pushing. It is something that is in the background, so let’s make it easy for them. So in 2008, let’s figure out the plumbing and focus on the solutions.
Merry Christmas for those of you who celebrate it, and Happy New Year to everyone.