Beyond Cost SavingsBeyond Cost Savings

One thing we think we know about the enterprise communications industry in 2009 is that the buying environment will be challenging, to put it mildly. At the same time, we think there will be companies seeking to capitalize on the opportunities that 2009 will present.

My fears about planning VoiceCon Orlando 2009 before we even get to VoiceCon San Francisco--that this might cause some sort of rip in the space-time continuum--appear to be unfounded, because Fred Knight and I are already working on the program for next March's event even as we pack our bags for next week on the West Coast. And so far the only thing to disappear has been the entire contents of my laptop's hard drive--but that's another story.One thing we think we know about the enterprise communications industry in 2009 is that the buying environment will be challenging, to put it mildly. At the same time, we think there will be companies seeking to capitalize on the opportunities that 2009 will present.

Fred and I had some preliminary discussions with our friends at UCStrategies last week, and all of these folks--Jim Burton, Marty Parker, Blair Pleasant and Don Van Doren--agreed that 2009 may see the industry's biggest players looking to gobble up market share at the expense of weaker competitors.

And ironically, one company that looks well placed to do this is Avaya. If you go to http://www.nojitter.com , you'll see multiple posts summarizing Avaya's recent analyst conference, where Avaya announced some executive changes and a new, improved approach to channel relationships and sales. The personnel moves culminated in the announcement last Friday of a new CEO for Avaya, Kevin Kennedy, who led a turnaround at JDS Uniphase and also was a colleague of Charlie Giancarlo at Cisco. Giancarlo has been serving as Avaya's interim president and CEO, and will continue as chairman after Kennedy takes over.

Another factor that positions Avaya well, at least relative to many of the other legacy players, is its private equity ownership. Silver Lake Partners and TPG, which together bought Avaya last year, will be able to fund Avaya's initiatives to regain market share--even if such efforts come, as they so often do in this kind of circumstance, at the expense of job cuts.

But getting back to VoiceCon Orlando, I think one thing Fred and I are searching for as we build the program is whether there are any analogues to the Avaya situation within enterprises. Can an enterprise really find a way to implement Unified Communications that gives it a business edge at a time when others are retrenching? The assumption is: only if that enterprise can make an ROI case that stands on its own, based on cost savings within the communications budget.

So we're approaching Orlando with a fresh approach to the program's structure: We'll be devoting a whole track to the question of How to Save Money with or on.... Each session within that track will focus on a different way of completing that sentence: How to Save Money with or On Video; How to Save Money with or on Telecom Services; How to Save Money with or on Wireless/Mobility; etc.

But we're also going to have a track on Generating Revenue/Transforming the Business. That's where all of this is supposed to be headed anyway, and we feel that if technology is adopted with a tunnel-vision focus on cost savings, this opportunity could be missed.

I expect most of the talk in San Francisco next week will follow these same lines, and the sessions there, and the show floor conversations, can't help but touch on the situation we find ourselves in. Nobody's under any illusion about the pressure that budgets are under, but communications will always be a mission-critical need for business, and when the budget picture thaws, you'll want to be ready to move.One thing we think we know about the enterprise communications industry in 2009 is that the buying environment will be challenging, to put it mildly. At the same time, we think there will be companies seeking to capitalize on the opportunities that 2009 will present.