Cisco Cius and the Future of Proprietary EndpointsCisco Cius and the Future of Proprietary Endpoints

How many "PBX" vendors will want--or be able--to release their own tablets?

The hot news last week was Cisco's announcement of its Cius tablet, and after several days of post-announcement analysis, I think we're getting a little better view of what Cius is and isn't.

One thing that seems clear is that Cius is the first of many similar products from communications vendors. As I noted in this blog post, it looks like pretty soon a tablet form factor is going to be a check-off item for at least the largest communications vendors. HP is reportedly going to release a tablet based on the WebOS operating system that it acquired with Palm; RIM is believed to be planning a tablet, as is Avaya.

One interesting thing will be how each vendor approaches the tablet as a form factor. Cisco built Cius with the option for serving as the touch-screen to a desk-phone-centric docking station, and clearly Avaya could go this direction as well. It seems unlikely that RIM would, however--though it's conceivable that HP could leverage its partnership with Microsoft and close relationship with Polycom to associate its tablet with a Polycom docking station and with Microsoft OCS/CS 14.

This gets us to the question of what these tablets are supposed to be for. Cisco is positioning Cius as a pure enterprise device--not a competitor to the iPad, at least for now--and is saying the target is vertical markets like health care. You can easily envision a tablet being a useful form factor for a nurse or doctor--it even kind of looks like a medical chart.

So maybe in a vertical market it makes sense to have a dedicated, enterprise device. But surely for knowledge workers with more general purpose tablet requirements, it doesn't make any sense to make them use a vendor-specific tablet instead of the iPad that they would doubtless prefer--right? And they certainly don't want to carry around two tablets. Marty Parker makes that case in this blog, and he's clearly got the weight of history on his side--general-purpose computing devices have been the rule, and personal choice of mobility device is likewise becoming the trend in the enterprise.

But I want to circle back to the enterprise communications vendors--the Ciscos and Avayas. Among the companies with PBX histories, these are the first two to be clearly associated with the tablet market. The question is, will any others follow?

Marty makes a point almost in passing that I think the former-PBX vendors are going to have to consider: "The tablet is likely a transitional product. It is really hard to imagine that this user interface form factor is the ultimate, when we already see much more private and personalized wearable devices coming into the market and coming down in price."

Cisco might be able to keep up in such a world, and HP too, but how much is it going to strain the R&D (and marketing) budgets of a Mitel or ShoreTel--and for that matter, an Avaya or Siemens Enterprise--if they have to start coming up with their own proprietary, branded end device/form factor as these devices proliferate? A phone is a phone is a phone--but as end device form factors proliferate, which vendors would really have the resources to keep up as providers of proprietary versions of these devices--assuming such a strategy were even the right one to pursue?

Put it down to another trend that'll kill the proprietary endpoint.