Choices in Unified Communications: Comparing Microsoft OCS 2007 to IBM Lotus Sametime 8.0Choices in Unified Communications: Comparing Microsoft OCS 2007 to IBM Lotus Sametime 8.0
There are more differences in philosophy and approach than in ultimate functionality.
February 12, 2008
IBM Lotus Sametime and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 are the two most widely deployed premises-based enterprise unified communications systems – loosely defined for these purposes as a system that includes elements of presence, instant messaging, voice and/or voice conferencing, web conferencing, mobility, unified messaging, and/or videoconferencing, all integrated through a common user interface and experience. For the purposes of this article, we lump Microsoft Office Live Communications Server (LCS) and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 together for simplicity and refer to them collectively as Office Communications Server or OCS.
We estimate that there are approximately 20 million paid Lotus Sametime licenses, based on information from IBM Lotus, while Microsoft OCS/LCS has somewhere between 10 and 20 million clients deployed (we have no indicators from Microsoft regarding how many clients are deployed and how many are paid licenses).
To put these numbers in perspective, this installed base of roughly 30 - 40 million unified communications clients represents less than 5 percent of the addressable market. With so many more desktop, laptop and PDA clients still to be converted to unified communications, the stakes are high, and Microsoft and IBM Lotus both want a dominant share of this emerging market. These companies are regarded as fierce competitors in any market they enter. Both are well capitalized, and they are ramping up their development and sales/marketing teams in order to seek significant revenue in the unified communications market.
This article contrasts and compares the unified communications solutions these two giants offer.
Significant Functional Differences
Out of the box, there are a host of differences between OCS and Sametime; however, when one includes partner company integrated solutions, there is little that OCS can do that can’t be done with Sametime, and vice versa. There are some notable exceptions.
A major difference is that Sametime can be deployed on multiple operating systems, including Windows, whereas OCS will only play in a Windows Server environment. Furthermore, Sametime integrates with Outlook and other Microsoft Office applications, but OCS does not integrate with Lotus Notes.
On the other hand, OCS allows Office Communicator 2007’s IP voice and video to traverse both corporate firewalls and network address translation devices, letting remote users come in over the Internet, but Sametime’s IP voice and video are designed to work over the enterprise LAN/WAN.
Microsoft has developed software-based call routing and switching capability within OCS 2007 with the intent that it will ultimately supersede, or at least render less valuable, the PBX capabilities offered by most enterprise telephony vendors. Although IBM Lotus has publicly declared that Sametime will rely on third-party PBX vendors to provide telephony capabilities for Sametime, IBM has not publicly revealed the details of its pending Sametime Unified Telephony offering and architecture.
There are numerous other differences, large and small, but the biggest differences are found in the approaches these two giants bring to the unified communications market.
Microsoft: Software-Powered Communications
Streamlining the user experience through software is a key element of Microsoft’s approach for unified communications, and the company has focused its efforts on developing a “person-centric” communications environment. This means there is a single user directory, a single login, a single SIP URI, a single inbox, and a single source for all presence information, regardless of which device a person may actually be using. Furthermore, the nature of the communications itself becomes streamlined via rich presence through integration with Exchange’s calendaring and email, as well as through the use of “activity level” indicators from the computer or telephone (that indicate when the phone is in use or a person has been away from their computer), and through communications capabilities embedded in other Microsoft and third-party, line-of-business applications.
Microsoft is attempting to provide a completely portable communications experience that offers the same multimodal, click-to-access capabilities whether someone is at work, at home, or while traveling, including telephony. The company believes that any PC running the Microsoft Windows operating system should have the full capabilities one needs to do business, and that the PC should provide the complete communications experience. In the Microsoft paradigm, every communications event passes through either Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 or Microsoft Exchange Server. Even if a person uses a non-Microsoft device, like the LG-Nortel OCS telephone, or even a mobile phone, communications events pass through one of these two servers.
Thus, when considering Microsoft’s unified communications approach, think of it as a client-server application that provides a streamlined user-centric communications experience based around the PC, laptop or mobile device. Microsoft’s approach is enabled by unified Microsoft back-end components utilizing Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft servers (SQL Server, Exchange Server, OCS 2007, Speech Server, etc.), Microsoft’s call control, and Microsoft’s collaborative environment embodied by Office Communicator and Live Meeting or as embedded in line-of-business applications.
IBM Lotus: Choice and Competitive Advantage
While Microsoft’s approach to unified communications could be described as person-centric, IBM Lotus seems to be approaching UC from more of a systems and platform standpoint. IBM Lotus’s philosophy is that organizations embrace openness and that they work in heterogeneous environments, preferring best-of-breed systems and capabilities from a number of different vendors. Thus, IBM Lotus’ unified communications strategy is supported by two fundamental pillars:
Providing an open and extensible platform that integrates presence, IM, unified messaging, web, voice, video, and telephony across multi-vendor operating environments and LDAP directories.
Integrating these capabilities together and leveraging them within business processes to create competitive advantage and reduce business latency.
Beginning with Lotus Sametime 7.5 and Lotus Notes 8.0 (IBM Lotus’ UC and email products, respectively), both products have been built on the Eclipse open software development and runtime framework. Eclipse is supported not only by IBM Lotus, but by other major vendors including Motorola, BEA, Nokia, Intel, Actuate, Sybase, Oracle, as well as by over 800,000 Eclipse software developers. Eclipse’s open software strategy allows IBM Lotus customers to easily extend or embed unified communications capabilities within their line-of-business applications, over a number of different operating systems. It also allows them to employ third-party, value-add products as part of the solution.
Thus, you could think of IBM Lotus’ approach to unified communications as offering a platform that can run on Microsoft, IBM, Sun, Linux, and Apple operating systems, and that utilizes IBM Lotus’ collaborative client/server applications -- Lotus Sametime, Lotus Domino (email server and directory services), and Lotus Notes (email client). This platform can easily be extended or embedded, and IBM Lotus embraces partners for telephony and other third party functionality. IBM Lotus’ stated purpose for the platform is to accelerate human communications in the organizations implementing it.
Table 1: Apples to Apples Sametime to OCS comparisonOut of the Box Capabilities
The most visible component each company provides is their unified client: Sametime Connect for Lotus Sametime and Office Communicator for Microsoft Office Communications Server. A careful look at each interface before any third party components are added shows a number of similarities.
Figure 1: Interfaces for Lotus Sametime (left) and Microsoft Office Communicator (right)
Both offer windows that display contact lists, presence status for individuals on the list, the ability to create groups, easy searching for people not on the contact list, conversation windows that show who is in an instant messaging session, and the ability to send messages with rich text, icons, and graphics. Both products display a series of control buttons that allow additional people to be invited to a meeting and which enable users to start a voice chat and/or a video chat session. These and additional controls can be accessed by right clicking the mouse over a contact’s name, which displays a pop-up controls menu.
While the video layouts are a little different, the major functionality within each interface is similar. Both provide controls to mute audio or video, both can go full screen, and the video quality is actually quite good in both. However, each has advantages and disadvantages.
Figure 2: Video interfaces for Sametime (left) and OCS (right)
For example, Sametime provides the administrator with numerous controls over the use of audio and video bandwidth on the enterprise network, but its IP voice and video do not support NAT and firewall traversal. The Sametime Connect client provides multiparty audio, but it supports only point-to-point video (multipoint video is supported when in a web conference, however). Sametime’s native IP audio will also not interface to a telephony system. Instead, numerous partners, including Avaya, Alcatel-Lucent, Cisco, Nortel, iLink, is-coord, Siemens, Pentos, PhoneSoft, and VoiceRite provide PBX integration with Sametime through Eclipse and the Sametime APIs.
IBM Lotus has purposely not designed Sametime as a softphone or with call routing capability. Additional partners provide third-party video integration, but, like the audio, Sametime’s native video does not integrate with these third-party systems.
Sametime supports federation with other Sametime deployments, and with AOL, Yahoo!, GoogleTalk, and Jabber-based IM systems (although not natively with OCS, so far). This federation allows IM and computer presence information to be exchanged.
In contrast, OCS 2007 now supports multipoint IP audio and video (the predecessor, LCS 2005, only provided point-to-point IP voice and video); however, Microsoft offers few audio and video controls to administrators. Microsoft has built codecs that are quite sophisticated, providing automatic bandwidth throttling in low bandwidth situations, and offering excellent error correction capabilities. There is no notion of call admission control, however, as Microsoft says its codecs degrade gracefully to overcome bandwidth reductions and packet loss. Thus, in a limited bandwidth scenario, as more people connect using voice and/or video, the call experience for everyone could diminish.
1. Microsoft OCS 2007 shows telephony presence natively for OCS 2007 compliant phones made by LG-Nortel, Polycom, and others. It does not show, out of the box, presence for phones connected to the enterprise PBX. This capability requires software integration provided by the PBX provider. Several Sametime partners have implemented telephony presence within Sametime; however, it requires the telephony vendor’s Sametime plug-in to provide this functionality.
2. The Lotus Sametime Connect client presently supports only point-to-point video; however, multipoint video is supported when in a Lotus Sametime web conference.
3. Sametime’s integration is more limited than OCS. OCS shows the text in the calendar entry whereas Sametime simply states “in a meeting” for all calendar entries.
4. Clearly, Microsoft will have an edge on integrating its own unified communications capabilities with Office applications and with Outlook.Table 2: Comparison of Out of the Box Capabilities
Microsoft also has developed OCS so that it can be securely used over the public Internet. Starting with Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft's audio and video can successfully traverse NATs and firewalls. Furthermore, Microsoft has designed OCS so that the Communicator client can act as a SIP endpoint when a partner's PBX or a third-party gateway is integrated with OCS. Partner companies include Nortel, Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Ericsson, Mitel, NEC, ShoreTel, and Siemens.
In addition, vendors like LG-Nortel, Polycom, and others have designed several OCS-compatible, plug-and-play desk phones. (Since Microsoft wrote the specifications for these phones, they all have similar functionality.) OCS also supports federation with other OCS implementations and it can federate with AOL, MSN, and Yahoo! (no Jabber, GoogleTalk, or Sametime thus far).
There are some significant differences in how the clients, and hence, the underlying infrastructure work. For example, while Microsoft OCS/Communicator supports the addition of SIP phones from select third-party vendors (as mentioned above), IBM Lotus does not support SIP voice endpoints.
OCS has tight integration with Exchange and the Outlook calendar right out of the box; similarly, Lotus Sametime has tight integration with Lotus Notes, and a slightly scaled-down version of Sametime even ships with Lotus Notes. Sametime can integrate with Outlook, but OCS does not integrate with Notes.
Each product also has “unique features” the other one does not have that make it useful and valuable for users. For example, Office Communicator has a rich presence model allowing it to display both telephone and computer presence. Also, users can quickly type a note about their current activity, such as “I’m working on the final PPT, ping only if urgent” that displays whenever another person moves their mouse over the first person’s presence icon. Calendar information will also display when OCS is integrated with Exchange.
Similarly, Lotus Sametime has some very nice user functions, such as built-in spell checking while typing instant messages. It also displays a pencil next to the name of anyone who is typing a message during an IM session. Sametime’s broadcast capability lets individuals send a message out to colleagues, and if the broadcast message is a request for information, individuals can choose to respond through an IM window. Unlike Microsoft OCS, Lotus Sametime does not allow you to set your status to “appear offline” while you are really online, as this is viewed in the Sametime world as lying and is a serious breach of IM/presence etiquette.
New to OCS 2007 is premise-based web conferencing (the web conferencing server resides on the premise as opposed to at a service provider’s location), whereas Lotus Sametime has supported premise-based web conferencing almost since its inception. Both Lotus Sametime and Microsoft OCS have the ability to launch an ad hoc web conference right from the contact list. New to Sametime is Sametime Unyte, a hosted web conferencing solution obtained through IBM’s acquisition of Web Dialogs.
A Few Key Differences
One of the key differences between Microsoft OCS and Lotus Sametime is how these products approach telephony. Microsoft has chosen to build significant call control and call routing and capabilities into Office Communications Server, to the extent that OCS supports dialing plans and even least-cost call routing. While OCS is designed to work in tandem with a PBX today, it will ultimately displace PBX and key systems “if it delivers on its promise, ”as Johan Krebbers of Shell put it in his VoiceCon Orlando 2007 keynote. OCS will natively provide compatible phones and video devices with all of the call-control capabilities that most users rely on, such as call hold, transfer, and forward, independent of the enterprise PBX. Of course, OCS can be integrated with the PSTN through gateways, and with telephone PBX systems using either SIP or CSTA (Computer Supported Telecommunications Applications, a series of protocols developed jointly by Microsoft and the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association.).
OCS can integrate with a SIP PBX, but the manufacturer must make some changes in the SIP protocol stack. Furthermore, a “mediation server” is required to transcode Microsoft’s proprietary audio format to one of the standard audio formats, such as G.711. Presently, OCS does not support SIP trunking with a service provider, but Microsoft reports that it is addressing the SIP trunking issue, and we expect announcements this year.
IBM Lotus, on the other hand, provides two ways for doing telephony integration and remote call control within Sametime, but it has no intention of building call routing and switching capabilities in the product. Using Sametime’s extensible model, telephony vendors can independently develop as much call control and switching capability for Sametime as they wish using the Sametime API and Eclipse. A second, preferred method is the standard remote call control interface, known as the Telephony Conferencing Service Provider Interface (TCSPI), that IBM Lotus has built within the Sametime interface. Either telephony integration method lets users answer, hang up, mute, and transfer desktop telephone calls from within Sametime; however, these features only work when a third party provider’s PBX or conferencing bridge is integrated with Sametime through the interface.
In 2007, IBM Lotus has announced Sametime Unified Telephony, a solution that promises to deliver a softphone within Sametime, multipoint IP voice, and a seamless way to integrate Sametime with telephony environments containing PBXs from different vendors. Although we are not at liberty to discuss Sametime Unified Telephony in this article, the details of this new solution will be forthcoming at VoiceCon Orlando in our Monday morning tutorial titled, “Choices in Unified Communications Solutions: Comparing Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to IBM Lotus Sametime 8.”
Another significant difference between Microsoft OCS and Lotus Sametime is operating system support. Naturally, Microsoft has designed OCS to work with and require Microsoft’s other software components including Windows Server 2003, Exchange Server 2000 and 2007, SQL Server, and Speech Server. IBM Lotus, on the other hand, supports Lotus Sametime Server on IBM Lotus pSeries (AIX), IBM Lotus i5/OS (iSeries) Sun Solaris, Microsoft Windows Server (2000 and 2003), Red Hat Linux, and Novell SUSE Linux. The Lotus Sametime Connect client is supported on Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, RedHat Enterprise Linux, Novell Linux Desktop, and Mac OS X. Because many organizations run a variety of server and desktop operating systems, IBM Lotus has a stronger offering for organizations with heterogeneous operating system requirements.
Both solutions can be extended or embedded. Lotus Sametime is built upon Eclipse while OCS is built on Microsoft’s .NET architecture. Although Sametime is built using open software components, there is a layer IBM Lotus created, called Lotus Expeditor, which provides significant functionality and makes it easier for developers to extend or embed Sametime. IBM Lotus charges for Lotus Expeditor. Furthermore, to extend Sametime, one must use the extension points that IBM Lotus has defined.
Thus, it appears that extending Lotus Sametime or Microsoft OCS still requires proprietary components from each company, as well as a clearly defined API. Based on our discussions with both Microsoft and IBM Lotus partner companies, we conclude that the Sametime platform is somewhat more open than OCS 2007 even though Microsoft has said that the OCS 2007 API is freely available. Thus, for the time being, we give the nod toward Lotus Sametime as being the more open and easily extensible/embeddable product. While Microsoft appears to be competing with some of its partners, by promoting its own voice capabilities, IBM Lotus has publicly drawn the line on the functionality it will develop within Sametime and what it will encourage its partners to create. Sametime Unified Telephony, however, may alter one’s perception of what IBM will and will not deliver. One big philosophical difference, at least for now, is that IBM Lotus wants both telephony and unified messaging partners, while it seems like Microsoft’s approach, at least in the arena of unified communications, is to partner today and compete tomorrow. That being said, Microsoft does need telephony partners today for its unified communications strategy to be adopted, and it has a very active and vibrant partner community.
Conclusion
IBM Lotus and Microsoft both have compelling unified communications platforms. Each has an intuitive interface. Both have advantages and disadvantages. The basic products have similar capabilities. Today, Microsoft clearly has an edge with respect to native telephony and unified messaging features, but will the new Lotus Sametime Unified Telephony allow IBM to catch and possibly surpass Microsoft? Our tutorial on integrating telephony with OCS and Sametime at VoiceCon Spring 2008 will reveal the answer.
Lotus Sametime supports multiple operating systems and LDAP directories, whereas OCS 2007 requires Microsoft-only infrastructure. Sametime has been deployed for a number of years in many companies, including 26 installations of over 100,000 users, proving it is robust and scalable; OCS has now been deployed by several large organizations, and it is proving its scalability.
E. Brent Kelly, Senior Analyst and Partner, leads the Unified Communications Practice for Wainhouse Research. He has over 18 years experience in developing and marketing highly technical products. Brent has authored reports and articles on migrating to IP communications, unified communications environments, IP video network providers, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, and telephony-based unified communications providers.
