News from VoiceCon: Does the Customer Win?News from VoiceCon: Does the Customer Win?

Lots of news this week, of course, thanks to VoiceCon. Here’s my take on a few of the key developments:

The biggest: Royal Dutch Shell announced plans to replace its Nortel IP-telephony infrastructure with Microsoft-based telephony (currently found in Office Communications Server, though who knows what it will be called by the time Shell completes its plan). The company says it plans to put all 140,000 of its employees on the Microsoft voice system. Why? According to Johan Krebbers, group IT architect for Royal Dutch Shell, the company expects a huge influx of young workers over the next several years, and he anticipates that they will demand a new generation of communications tools.

It’s a remarkable goal, and a potentially huge gamble given Microsoft’s limited experience with voice communications (or even, when you think about it, real-time networks). The risk is mitigated by time—Shell intends to deploy a Nortel IPT system to all those 140,000 desktops first, and so far it’s hit only 5,000 of them; and Krebbers has made it clear that he envisions getting all the value he can out of the Nortel system before the company moves to OCS. By then, Microsoft may have literally years of voice expertise under its belt. (Interesting, of course, that Shell is deploying Nortel IPT equipment, given the strong Microsoft/Nortel partnership announced last summer; clearly in this case, the Innovative Communications Alliance worked.)

Microsoft keynoter Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft’s business division, also announced the publication of the Interoperability Specification for Office Communication Server 2007 to enable integration between OCS and business process applications, as well as other communications systems. Add to that his prediction that in three years, the cost of VoIP solutions will decrease by 50%, and, well, it’s game on.

Taking up the challenge were IBM and Cisco, who announced the deepening of their existing UC partnership. The deal has several explicit goals, including:

The vendors also say they want to make it easier for customers to purchase their integrated solutions. The benefits to the vendors seem clear, although as with most partnerships, success lies in the details. The benefits for users, however, are far less evident.

One might say this is IBM and Cisco’s answer to Microsoft and Nortel’s alliance. But although these and any similar deals have the potential to speed development and bring UC products to market faster, as well as incent sales teams on both sides to push UC to their customers, they don’t really benefit IT. That’s because more than anything, IT buyers want choice.

Just yesterday I spoke with an IT executive at a global consulting company who told me that although Cisco is aggressively pushing him to replace all his voice and video communications with Cisco gear, he refuses to do so—the quality just isn’t there across the board. What’s more, he needs to integrate multiple products from multiple vendors across his enterprise and across technologies. That is, his voice network isn’t built on a single vendor’s products; his video endpoints aren’t from a single vendor; and he needs it all to integrate with Microsoft’s OCS. Neither the Nortel/Microsoft alliance nor the IBM/Cisco deal specifically helps him.

Truth be told, I’m a bit surprised that Avaya wasn’t the one making the news with IBM this week; regardless of what happens to voice, Cisco stands to gain by supporting the network overall. If IPT and UC do nothing else, they make the data network more critical than ever in any IT environment—Cisco has plenty to gain right there. Avaya, on the other hand, could use a strong ICE partner, and of course it was the first telephony vendor to enter into a UC partnership with IBM, oh-so-long ago. (OK, it was just last year!)

But Avaya is making a big push toward communications embedded business processes (CEBP), which is a goal I firmly believe in. Basically, the goal is to improve business processes by automating the human element and decreasing latency. For example, a manufacturing company could use CEBP to respond to supply chain issues before they become a problem, by building live notifications (via phone, IM or e-mail) into the business process. If the problem requires collaboration before action, the necessary people can immediately be brought into a conference call, for instance, based on their presence; make a decision; and then use communications tools to act and follow up.

Avaya isn’t the only vendor to push the concept (see Microsoft, above), but it’s among the best at talking about it, and its latest efforts show signs of real dedication on the software development side, too. Plus, it’s got big customers like Whirlpool on board.

In case you haven’t noticed, 2007 marks a huge turning point in the world of communications. VoIP took its time getting enterprise-ready, but now that it’s here it turns out to be just the tip of the iceberg. Get ready for a bumpy but exciting ride.