UC+C Insights Part I of II

Insight on Microsoft UC+C

Microsoft has some challenges that need to be acknowledged:

- Had a lot of start/stop messaging around corporate telephony and enterprise voice. Customers and their own field resources folks have heard a lot of varying messages – OCS is a PBX replacement, OCS is a compliment to existing PBX’s, etc.

- Enterprise Voice is new to their account teams and is intimidating for them as shown in the lack of confidence in much of the customer facing messaging and conversations

- They has been challenged to effectively articulate the differences and technical value in how they are approaching telephony, especially within traditional IT and Telecom

However, all of these challenges relate to the cultural rather than the technology. Those cultural challenges will continue to lessen as the organization becomes more comfortable with enterprise voice and telephony and how it fits into the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC+C) platform.

Innovative Technology
Microsoft makes really innovative software and technology, especially as part of the UC+C platform. Some examples:

1. Enterprise Voice/VoIP Telephony
The use of Real Time Audio (RT Audio) in Office Communication Server is a great example of technology innovation. RT Audio has been used extensively in delivering VoIP in the consumer market as part of Windows Live Messenger and Xbox Live, logging over 2 billion minutes per month. It’s designed to be a variable bit rate codec that can adjust to fluctuating network conditions on-the-fly during a conversation.

Cisco’s first reaction to Microsoft’s use of RT Audio in OCS was extremely hostile and negative but once they understood the value and innovation of that technology they moved quickly to introduce their own version of a variable codec – a clear testament to Microsoft’s leadership and innovative thinking.

2. Communication-Enabling SharePoint Workflows (CEBP)
Customers can use SharePoint to create business process workflows. A simple example is a workflow for on-boarding new employees. As part of that, SharePoint can provide reports about the workflow that can be used to identify bottlenecks and latency (i.e. it took security 10 days to provide RAS access).

Organizations can use the analysis data and map it to UC capabilities to "communication-enable" the process (i.e. route the RAS request to security based on presence, if the request with security is unresolved for more than 2 days then escalate a communication to a manager, etc.)

You could then go back and re-run the process and reports to measure the improvements. This could be easily repeated across the different LoB’s.

As a software platform, Microsoft UC+C is uniquely positioned to deliver CEBP capabilities. Hardware vendors like Cisco (CUAE) and Avaya (CPM) have made attempts to do the same thing with very limited success.

Microsoft Voice – A PBX Replacement Today
Microsoft has been doing voice in the enterprise (via OCS) for two years and is already recognized as a top 5 voice player in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Corporate Telephony. Gartner also noted that Microsoft is positioned as a “Visionary” reflecting Gartner’s view that telephony, which should be viewed in the context of a broader unified communications decision, is increasingly moving from hardware to software.

Microsoft has also been recognized as the leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications for the past three years.