A Lot Can Change In 5 Months

After a long break, I am back! it's been 5 months since I last blogged and much has transpired in the world of UC. Cisco bought Jabber and PostPath as well as announced UC System 7 and Webex Connect. Microsoft announced R2 of OCS to close the voice gap on their mission to replace the PBX and grab their share of the estimated $45B UC market.

My last blog was "A Good Buy For Microsoft" in which I suggested that "they could buy Avaya by the end of the summer". Obviously that hasn't happened which further illustrates the flux of the industry at present. I am not so confident that it's going to happen...perhaps because of the economy or because Microsoft decided to do a $40B stock buy back instead of an M&A deal or maybe they don't want the legacy technology.

Regardless, now that Charlie Giancarlo is "filling in" as CEO Avaya one could expect that this is the start of some exciting times over there...if for no other reason than to make themselves more appeaing to prospective buyers. No question TPG and Silverlake still want to sell the company...or at least parts of it so what are we going to see from them in the coming months?

The fact that Charlie is the keynote at VoiceCon in San Francisco next month should tip you off that somethings coming - even without Jim Grubb to help him demo telepresence! What could they be developing that's news worthy? Maybe some announcement around their Ubiquity acquisition from two years ago, but that'd be it. Perhaps its around a partnership with someone like IBM or even RIM (yes, RIM…if you recall RIM acquired Ascendent in 2006 and in a Gartner research document from March/2006 Bern Elliot, Ken Dulaney, and Phillip Redman stated, “Ascendent's software will enable Research in Motion's BlackBerry to connect with PBXs and work like a business phone. This could enable its entry into the mobile unified communications market”). Maybe even a merger announcement - there have been rumors of a private equity buyout of Tandberg by TPG/Silverlake that could result in a merger bween Avaya and Tandberg. If that were the case Charlie could do another telepresence demo - this time with the MOC client and an Avaya PBX backend! Don’t scoff, Cisco even discussed a possible merger between the two during their UC System 7 Launch Webinar in September!

The real question out of all of this is: Does anyone care? I think most people have written Avaya off and look at the $45B UC market as a three horse race between Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco. However, I don't think Avaya is out of it yet. Giancarlo is a great leader and visionary...Avaya still has some of the best products around...and they have a huge customer base. In some way, shape or form Avaya is still going to play a big part in the future of UC - even if it's under someone else's logo.