On the fourth day of UC the industry gave to me
the voicemail market girds,
an AT lens,
what SMB loves,
And a clear definition of UC.
Girds you say. Yes girds. It’s my fervent wish, and some others, that the voicemail market girds itself for a huge installed base churn, and what better to replace it with than new messaging as a part of unified communications? Major churn in voice messaging has already happened more than once before. The most recent big churn occurred around 2000, due in part to the infamous Y2K as companies hurried to upgrade their voicemail systems for two reasons. The most visible reason was Y2K and fear that the older systems hard-coded software wouldn’t be able to handle the change in century dates. This was pushed further by companies seeking to replace PBXs for the same reason, and typically when they choose to replace the PBX it drags voicemail along with it. The second was pure age. Voice messaging started in the early 80’s and with many releases under our belts, many of those old Audix, PhoneMail, Octel, MeridianMail, CallXpress, and other voicemail systems just needed to be replaced. We were no longer selling voicemail by the pound, and they just needed to go. Plus, new functionality, such as unified messaging, was starting to make waves, which just contributed to the movement to replace.
Although its hard to believe that it has been seven years since New Year’s Eve – 1999, it has. So, not only is it time for a refresh in general, a lot more of the installed base systems are “end of lifed”, with no new releases on the horizon. So those companies that want to expand capacity or functionality and are relying on older systems wont’ have much of a choice. Another driver towards what I hope will be some major replacements is the already strong trend towards implementing IP. In the last five years we have seen strong growth in replacement of legacy PBXs with VoIP switches. As companies make this move, they most probably will again look at replacing their messaging systems as well.
In any case, my fourth day wish is that no only do we replace those old voicemail systems, but that when this happens customers will also look at what else vendors have to offer, and that leads to talk of unified communications.