Siemens Enterprise held their global analyst event last week in beautiful Vienna, Austria, and in addition to wanting to get an update on the business, possibly every analyst in attendance was eager to find out if Siemens was going to announce which company would take over the enterprise business. However, as Brian Riggs of Current Analysis pointed out in his ‘Siemens Enterprise: June Wedding Postponed’ (loved that title) blog on NoJitter, there was no long awaited news on who the lucky partner would be for Siemens – yet. However, that didn’t stop many analysts at the event from trying to squeeze shreds of info out of Siemens execs as to who it might be, yet they remained strong and didn’t and couldn’t say.
What was clear from the event is that the two years since Siemens announced that it was looking for a buyer has been good for the enterprise division. Rather than paralyzing them, it appears to have catalyzed them and they have revamped, rewritten, and reworked, and improved their product lines and business structure, divested themselves of pieces of the business that they didn’t need, and focused their R&D on UC solutions. During this time Siemens has made huge strides in transforming their business to a software and services business. In essence, to take Brian’s analogy a step further, if Siemens Enterprise were a person looking for a marriage partner, they are now down to their “fighting weight”.
During the event we heard some pretty nice claims including that they believe that they have the world’s first truly integrated UC solution based on open standards. Their OpenScape comprehensive software suite is based on SOA, and they claim it works on any client, IT or telephony infrastructure, and has been deployed on many platforms including Cisco, Nortel, NEC, Avaya and IBM.
We also heard about Siemens OpenScale Services, which help customers design, implement and support UC solutions from multiple vendors. This global offering allows customers to integrate UC solutions whether or not they are Siemens products, which is music to my ears as it is open recognition that customers rarely have products from just one vendor. Also, along the lines of global offerings, Siemens was quick to point out that they believe that they are the only vendor in the UC space that has direct sales presence on a global scale. Yet they were also clear in explaining that partners, domestically or globally, are incredibly important to them as well, and they have recently streamlined and simplified their partner program globally.
Finally, I was happy to note that Siemens is really paying attention to the SMB market with the announcement recently of their SMB software product, OpenOffice UC appliance, which provides SMBs with UC and contact center functionality in a simple appliance.
We are still waiting to find out who the lucky bride or groom will be, but at least I am much more comfortable knowing that Siemens is ready.