What to Watch in 2010What to Watch in 2010

The top 5: The next OCS release; Norvaya; Cisco vs. Microsoft; video; and UC's future.

As we wrap up arguably the most tumultuous year in enterprise communications, I thought it would be worth spending a few minutes looking at what I believe will be the big stories of 2010. Here are my top five (in no particular order):1. Microsoft Office Communications Server 2010 Wave 14. At some point in 2010 Microsoft will officially enter the IP-PBX business. Sure, OCS 2007 and 2007 R2 provide a number of telephony features and the ability to serve as an enterprise IP-PBX, but several limitations such as the lack of branch survivability, E-911, many legacy telephony features, and low-cost dedicated phones have limited adoption. Nearly 100% of companies we interviewed in our last round of research saw OCS as a supplement to their phone system, not as a replacement. While they still relied on Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, ShoreTel, Siemens, etc. for voice, they saw OCS as a UC dashboard, using Microsoft Office Communicator to integrate presence from various applications, click to call, and they wanted to leverage OCS's audio and web conferencing capabilities to replace hosted services or add new functionality. Microsoft hopes this will all change with Wave 14 as they attempt to close the feature gap between OCS and more mature enterprise telephony platforms. Will enterprise IT managers give them a chance? That's a key area we'll look at in our next round of research starting in early 2010.

2. Norvaya 2009 ends with the long awaited finalization of Avaya's acquisition of Nortel's enterprise communications business. The culmination of many months of bidding and wrangling leaves many questions unanswered. While Nortel brings many complements to Avaya--a larger indirect channel, professional services, international presence, and federal government sales business; there's a great deal of product overlap. Legacy Nortel customers are sitting pretty, with most major telephony vendors beating down their door to offer compelling and cost-effective migration strategies. Avaya's chief concern obviously is retaining as many Nortel customers as possible while it continues product and personnel integration. But other key challenges bear watching in 2010. What will Avaya do with Nortel's enterprise networking business (routers, switches, WLAN controllers, etc.)? Will Avaya go head-to-head against Cisco, 3Com, and HP among others in this space, or will it sell off the enterprise switching/routing business to an Enterasys or someone else to raise cash? Speaking of the need to raise cash, Avaya recently had its debt reduced to junk bond status. While the CEO Kevin Kennedy said during a press/analyst call this week that they are on path to achieve significant debt reduction, their ability to execute will ultimately determine the success or failure of the Nortel acquisition.

3. Cisco vs. Microsoft Arguably the question I am asked the most by enterprise IT planners is how to draw the line between Cisco and Microsoft as they plan their UC strategy. As I noted earlier, most still see OCS as a conferencing/UC dashboard solution. That will change in two ways in 2010, first via the aforementioned introduction of OCS 2010, but perhaps more importantly, through Cisco's efforts to go at the heart of the Microsoft portfolio--Exchange, via Cisco WebEx Mail. Cisco's UC efforts are ultimately hampered by the "We're a Microsoft Exchange/SharePoint shop, so it's natural for us to implement OCS" argument. In November Cisco launched an aggressive strategy to replace Microsoft in all areas but desktop applications, introducing WebEx mail, Enterprise Collaboration Server as well as hosted instant messaging through WebEx Connect. All of these taken together enable Cisco to offer a complete replacement for the Microsoft infrastructure. But this is new ground for Cisco, IT shops with extensive Microsoft implementations are likely to resist change, and they still largely think of Cisco as the "router" company. Cisco's ability to achieve mindshare among the Microsoft faithful (including the developer community) bears close watching in 2010.

4. Video 2009 was arguably the year that video went mainstream. Not only did Cisco cement the growing importance of video with its big acquisition of Tandberg, but video adoption and use grew, as did interest in stored/streaming platforms and video conferencing across enterprise boundaries. I expect to see all of these trends continue in 2010, and perhaps accelerate. There are a couple of wildcards worth watching. The first is Polycom, now standing alone as the only independent provider in all video conferencing market segments (desktop, room, telepresence). The second is Vidyo, whose H.264 SVC desktop and room solution provides high quality video conferencing over unreliable networks, and without the need for a port-based MCU, meaning a company can implement high quality video with less need to invest in bandwidth and optimized network services. Both of these companies will be attractive acquisition candidates in 2010. It's also worth continuing to watch the growing army of telepresence vendors such as Teliris, Telanetix, and Mitel as they offer alternatives to Cisco/Tandberg. Speaking of Cisco/Tandberg, key areas to watch include harmonization of channels, the future of Tandberg's own telepresence offering, and how Cisco integrates Tandberg products into its own video conferencing offerings. Finally, I expect that we'll begin to see video enter the mobile world as 4G services start to become available.

5. Defining UC There have been several posts here on NoJitter and elsewhere talking about the future of UC. Will it continue to exist as a distinct technology? Or will UC simply melt into the background as a set of features embedded into other applications? I expect that we'll continue to see an evolution. From the vendor perspective UC features such as presence, federation, and multi-modal conferencing are quickly becoming standard features of any enterprise communications platform. Customers are also far more likely now to expect that these features are part of their next communications solution and they realize that they aren't buying a "phone system." I expect that the real trend in the UC market over the next year will be integration of UC features across an ever-growing set of applications including social computing, shared workspaces, CRM, and ERP. I think we're beyond the "is there value in UC?" argument, and as the technology matures we're moving into the areas of "how do I manage it?", "how do I secure it?", "how do I enforce compliance requirements?", and "how do I extend services beyond organizational boundaries to both mobile users and customers/suppliers/partners?" In addition I expect to see the lines between UC and Enterprise 2.0 continue to blur as organizations increasingly integrate emerging communication channels such as microblogging into their UC and collaboration architectures.

So there you have it, five key areas to watch in 2010, a few predictions, and few concerns. Happy New Year everyone!The top 5: The next OCS release; Norvaya; Cisco vs. Microsoft; video; and UC's future.