Pin Drop Soup (Dave Michels) on the UCIFPin Drop Soup (Dave Michels) on the UCIF

Feeling positive about the new interoperability forum, even with the challenges.

Dave Michels weighed in on the new Unified Communications Interoperability Forum on Pin Drop Soup; you should definitely check out his analysis.One thing Dave mentions that I agree is impressive is the level of commitment that the founding members seem to be putting into the effort, in the form of high-level support and participation from key executives.

Dave also makes a point similar to Michael Finneran on this site: "UCIF is attempting to create application level interoperability; this is a major and fairly unique undertaking."

Indeed, I'm hard pressed to think of a similar type of effort, but when I was briefed in advance of the announcement, Bernard Aboba of Microsoft made the point that any step forward in any area represents a significant benefit. Specifically, he said that going from bilateral interoperability agreements to multilateral, even if it's just in one application or product area, can be a huge win, since it can take months to set up the lab to test and establish just one bilateral relationship--not to mention setting up the legal agreements.

Even if the UCIF process took a year to conclude a specific multilateral agreement, being able to take off from there with no further wrangling would represent "an order of magnitude savings" over replicating the process via multiple bilateral agreements.Feeling positive about the new interoperability forum, even with the challenges.