On the Twelfth day of UC the industry gave to me, figuring out the plumbing (Interoperability and standards)
the value of video, not hyping, (good solid uses of video of all types)
no more pagers beeping, (customers lining up to buy unified communications solutions)
interface enhancing, (ASR and TTS improved and integrated into more UC applications/interfaces)
CFOs bilking, (UC sales up with good ROI stories)
overuse of power dimming, (Green, green, green)
applications plug ‘n playing, (integration and out of the box use)
five phone rings, (carriers solving access problems)
the voicemail market girds, (installed base churn of voice mail in favor of UC)
an AT lens, (incorporating more assistive technology components into UC solutions)
what SMB loves, (paving the way for SMB adoption of UC)
And a clear definition of UC (This one is pretty clear)

A Clear Definition of UC

I have to say that a year after I made my first wish that the industry agree on a clear definition of UC, it still hasn’t happened. Maybe we should make that a New Year’s resolution and not just a wish. However, whereas we don’t have one single definition, we certainly have more awareness of what UC is, and we are seeing an expansion of what vendors and the press talk about when they discuss unified communications. Four areas of expansion come to mind. Two of them collaboration and video, are being driven harder by Cisco than a team of horses leading a wild west wagon train, but with a significant number of video and collaboration wagons in that procession. The third area, speech technologies, is gathering steam, not just as user enhancement to one of the core areas of UC – mobility – ala voice-activated dialing and command and control of applications, but also in adjuncts such as voicemail-to-text, and audio search. On a note, text-to-speech additions are still lagging behind speech rec in this category. Lastly, we have emerging social networking applications, such as FaceBook and Twitter that are starting to blend in with UC as well. With these broadening areas, along with offerings that work for the lower end of the market as well as enterprise, and with hosted UC gaining momentum, 2009 is going to be an interesting year for unified communications.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that vendors aren’t just driving awareness of UC, but also education about it. In Q4 several vendors sought to educate end users/customers. Nortel, as just one example, launched a program for IT professionals and students to educate them on unified communications. They market it as “the most comprehensive, vendor-neutral training and certification curriculum available today”, complete with a self study guide called ‘Unified Communications Solutions: A Practical Business Technology Approach’ (Nortel Press).

What SMB Loves

Although this is a Q4 update, and not a yearly summation, I have to say that I got my wish on catering to what SMB loves in the UC department. In Q4 there was a lot of activity for the SMB segment of the market. Making good on the focus that they announced over a year ago, Cisco once again was one of the most visible players in the SMB market with their November announcement of a $100 million global strategic initiative focused on small business networking and communications solutions, targeted at companies with less than 100 employees. To this end Cisco created a new Cisco Small Business Technology Group (SBTG) to develop technologies, as they put it, that are “focused on six areas consistently highlighted as top priorities by small businesses for enabling business growth: connectivity, security, remote access, productivity, customer interaction and customer support”, and one primary focal point of that is UC and of course video within UC and out. The initiative includes a dedicated sales unit, marketing programs, and customized service and support for SMBs.

Fall VoiceCon in San Francisco had a number of UC SMB announcements, including U4EA Technologies highlighting their Fusion Multi-service Business Gateways (MSGB) UC appliances, including Fusion Wireless LAN Controller and Access points, that provide SOHO, SMBs, and geographically-dispersed enterprises with affordable UC applications. These devices provide routing, switching, VoIP session control, security, call admission control and QoS for UC management at the WAN/LAN boundary. At the show U4EA announced that they had been selected to participate in Polycom’s ARENA Partner Ecosystem program, with the goal of offering SMBs enhanced QoS for IP voice and video applications by verifying interoperability between the U4EA MSBGs and the Polycom unified collaboration platform. U4EA also highlighted their GoSTM (Guarantee of Service), which is a patented QoS technology that addresses the need for high quality of service when there are multiple real-time IP applications that utilize an existing common WAN link from an SMB into the IP network.

In December, Unison Technologies announced that they will be making their unified communications software, Unison, available free of charge as the world's first sponsor-supported enterprise application, providing to the SMB market, as they say, “a zero-cost alternative to high-cost solutions like Microsoft Exchange or simplistic hosted offerings such as Google Apps”. Unison allows any SMB to download Linux or Windows-based software for free without license fees. Unison’s UC offering integrates email, IM, telephony, calendars and contacts into a single client and server, and runs on-premise. Unison’s standard version of software is $50 per user, but this new offering is ad-supported, with two initial sponsors with business-targeted ads; Intermedia and Ubuntu Linux (Canonical), with their ads appearing in the desktop client and on the administrator’s control panel.

NEC also made an announcement of new UNIVERGE bundled solutions offerings for the SMB market. UNIVERGE UC1, UC3, and Business Basics solution bundles follow NEC’s previously announced role-based approach to UC and help make deploying IP telephony and unified communications solutions simple and cost-effective. The new bundles for UC consist of UC1 for small businesses and UC3 for mid-sized organizations, and are all-in-one UC solutions that combine UC applications, applications, and infrastructure and management tools in one cost-effective package.

In Q4, Spanlink introduced three pre-packaged UC solutions for the SMB marketing, based on Cisco products. SpanCom 50 is a low cost entry solution for small businesses or branch offices up to 50 users. SpanCom 200 supports up to 200 users. SpanCom 200Flex includes all of the features of SpanCom 200, while also allowing businesses to pick-and-choose from advanced UC components such as presence and mobility.

Not to be outdone, Mitel released a new version of its Mitel 3000 communications system for small office home office (SOHO) and small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Mitel 3000, (formerly Inter-Tel 3000 or EncoreCX), was rebranded following the merger with Inter-Tel, and enhanced with new telephones and new unified communications solutions. The Mitel 3000 is a modular, intuitive and easy-to-install IP telephone system with 100+ features and offers three in-skin voice mail card options. Mitel also offers an optional Broadband Module providing a LAN/WAN connection for up to 12 IP extensions or 12 VoIP lines (or a mixture) and supports unified communications functionality including unified messaging, click-to-dial, and Microsoft Outlook integration, and the Mitel 5110 Softphone.

As part of an emerging trend of UC hosting, Microsoft and Nortel’s UC team introduced a hosted UC and collaboration service for carriers for the SMB market. This was a jump into the big hosted pool after dipping their feet in the water with a managed solution offering earlier in the year. This new offering uses Nortel’s Communications Server 2000 (CS 2000), an IP multimedia softswitch, and Microsoft‘s Solutions for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration (HMC) Version 4.5. The package is rounded out with Nortel’s Global Services portfolio providing integration and end-user services. Cisco, as part of its Hosted UC Services, provides managed services for small businesses as well.

Voicemail Market

It’s not just churning of the voicemail market, that is important, but enhancing it. One of the recurring themes of 2008 was a growing niche of vendors offering voicemail transcription services for voicemail; for example, SpinVox and GotVoice that turn voicemails into text messages. Similarly, pertinent to the UC market, and an alternative to voicemail – text messaging – also saw an influx of speech-to-text message or speech-to-IM applications too, from vendors such as Pinger.

Interoperability

Siemens Enterprise Communications announced the availability of OpenScape Mobility, combining enterprise telephony, video, unified communications, wireless and fixed mobile convergence in a single integrated mobile UC solution. OK, so it’s not interoperability between disparate vendors, but still, it is interoperability. OpenScape Mobility combines the Siemens HiPath MobileConnect, HiPath Wireless, and new OpenScape Enterprise Mobile Client. Included in the announcement was the All-Wireless Enterprise with HiPath Wireless (V5R3) 802.11n WLAN, HiPath MobileConnect (V2) FMC solution and OpenScape Enterprise Mobile Client for RIM, Symbian and Windows mobile devices. The new release enables some new UC functionality too. For example, Siemens can now deliver OpenScape HD Video over 802.11n, which will enable portable video units to be used in remote locations or branches. V2 of MobileConnect provides users with enhanced security.

Interface Enhancing and Assistive Technology

Enhancing the user-interface is a pretty broad topic and blends right in with assistive technology. When I made my wish last year I focused on TTS and ASR as input and output modes for UC applications. That certainly has happened. Mobile devices are flush with voice-activated dialing, and mobile search has taken off with applications from Google, Vlingo, etc. Speech is now on all handsets, and new deals are made each quarter. For example, in Q4, Nokia struck a deal with Nuance to put Nuance’s speech recognition on Nokia handsets, and will let third-parties create applications using speech via APIs, such as mobile music search, navigation, etc.

Similarly, earlier in the year I made mention that the iPhone came out without voice-activated dialing, which was quickly corrected in the quarter that followed. Q4 was no different with MELODIS Corporation launching MELODIS Voice Dialer, its latest freeware application for the Apple iPhone.

In Q4, TravellingWave, developers of VoicePredict, a multimodal speech-to-text input technology for mobile devices, announced that it will bundle VoicePredict with Zi’s eZiText and eZiType text prediction products, to improve upon text input for mobile devices. An embedded solution, VoicePredict allows a user to more quickly enter text into their mobile device by a combination of speaking and typing. Through a combination of speaking and starting to type a word the word is recognized and pops up on the screen with other choices. A truly multimodal input methodology, the speech recognition portion can be turned off in situations where speech input is not appropriate, such as truly noisy environments. VoicePredict currently has a 30K word vocabulary, and gains in accuracy with use. It currently only supports English and Windows mobile devices, but the company plans to expand to more languages and devices.

Intelligent Mechatronic Systems Inc (IMS) a company specializing in Telematics, automotive safety and mobile media, announced a partnership with ASR vendor, Loquendo, integrating Loquendo’s ASR into IMS’ new iLane product. iLane is a portable in-car device that let’s a user use their voice to command and control their smart phone to manage phone calls, calendar items, and SMS messages.

As I mentioned earlier, we saw both an increase in the use of speech technologies within UC, but also the entrance of social networking applications within UC as well, and in some instances a combination. For example, it’s common now for users to update social networking sites, such as FaceBook, from their mobile phones, or from other social networking sites. Companies such as Ping.fm allow users to update all their social networking sites at the same time. Combining this with speech, SpinVox announced a new Ping.fm plug-in that let’s users update all their sites by making a phone call, through their ‘Ping through SpinVox’ service, which converts a spoken post or update into text, and simultaneously broadcasts it to thirty of the most popular social networking sites. Although, I think that updating multiple sites at the same time has the potential for overkill, its pretty cool to be able to do it with a phone call.

Going Green

No, this isn’t a Cisco commercial, but seriously, Cisco scored in this category too. Green is everywhere at Cisco including green.tv, which is a Web TV channel for environmental films that has launched a content collaboration with Cisco including a series of films focused on Cisco's Connected Urban Development initiative, which looks at how to reduce carbon emissions through improvements in the efficiency of the urban infrastructure made possible by information and communications technology (ICT) such as Cisco(R) TelePresence.