Reviewing Microsoft's UC Launch Event

Blogger: Mike Gotta, Principal Analyst

Microsoft officially launched its UC platform last week in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Auditorium. A webcast of the keynote is available here. Please note that if you scroll down, there are also links to case studies as well as the launch presentations and demos. I attended the event and posted a series of entries on my Collaborative Thinking blog.

• Microsoft UC Launch Event: Getting Ready
• Microsoft Launch Event: Bill Gates Keynote
• Microsoft UC Launch: Jeff Raikes & Bill Gates
• Microsoft UC Launch: VoIP Quality of Experience
• Microsoft UC Launch: Anywhere Access
• Microsoft UC Launch: Embedding UC In LOB Applications

Was anything new announced?

Much of the media coverage related to the event was pretty lukewarm regarding the "news" coming from the keynote and other sessions. To a great extent, that perspective is valid. What Microsoft has been doing regarding its unified communications strategy has been widely presented over the past year (including VoiceCon Spring and VoiceCon Fall). If you scroll down through my blog entries on the topic of unified communications, you will find several posts related to Microsoft. So from a technology perspective - you had to look beyond the obvious to find some hint of what was coming next - and there were some hints provided in the breakout presentations. I'm not sure why anyone expected any "new" information- this event was more of a signature moment on an effort that has evolved and progressed over the last five years. Additional information:

• Microsoft Launches Next Wave of Business Communications Software
• Bill Gates on the Age of Software-Powered Communications
• Partners Rally Around Microsoft Unified Communications Software

So what were some of the takeaways?

To compete in the UC market, enterprise strategists will be looking for vendors to deliver on the following (covered in this post):

• Platform approach
• Centralized data
• Multi-channel user experience
• Extensibility
• Economics

This does not mean reliance on a single vendor end-to-end, but a cohesive architectural framework with appropriate interfaces for integration (that allows for substitution of a vendor's native capability with that provided by another) and support for interoperability (e.g., via gateways or federation).

Another key point is that the strategic level of competition has shifted from technology to business model. By this, I mean that vendors trying to compete with Microsoft must be able to deliver and differentiate when it comes to channels, partner ecosystem, champions (not just traditional sponsors but new audiences - especially application developers), and third-party support (not only partners but from independent vendors and competitors integrating into the UC platform). This topic was covered in this post.

The next important message: planning is essential for success. Regardless of vendor, unified communications is complicated. Not only do you have all the technologies (instant messaging, audio / video / web conferencing, VoIP/IP Telephony, etc) but also mobile scenarios, room systems, hosted environments, security (perimeter network) and compliance needs that are made that much more intricate when you add in UC-enabled applications and topology influences (multiple data centers). Some of these issues were covered in this post.

What's next?

There were no specific keynote statements from Microsoft on future deliverables, timelines and such other than general statements on how UC technology will evolve and show up within various Microsoft software and platforms. There was a link made between UC and Microsoft's "Surface Computing" effort. There was the standard talk about "click to communicate" from within Office and how UC will end up within Microsoft's Dynamics solution as well as discussion on UC-enabled applications. There are some tactical needs that Microsoft needs to focus on:

• Maturity: OCS is not an refresh/rebrand of LCS - there are new server roles, new components for the perimeter network, completely new functionality in terms of audio/video, and some new twists on communication methods (e.g., running a custom extension to SIP called Centralized Conference Control Protocol, Microsoft's proprietary Live Meeting's Persistent Shared Object Model traffic, and early implementation of a pending IETF standard, Globally Routable User Agent URI). There is also no integration between the Microsoft Intranet Portal (used by some companies to manage their hosted Live Meeting service) and OCS.
• Compliance: While the archival capabilities are improved, if you are a regulated industry I think you will still rely on OCS-friendly products that provide more comprehensive frameworks.
• Federation: Still no support for XMPP federation (and no excuse other than politics).
• Multiple Data Centers: If you have multiple data centers, I'm not convinced OCS is there in terms of distributed topologies (failover across multiple enterprise pools and routing of voice traffic across data centers).
• Application Development: Building applications around OCS remains a work-in-progress - I still believe there needs to be greater consistency and a higher level of abstraction for application developers (as opposed to system developers). This may require some breaking of Communicator to develop a more consistent plug-in model similar to what IBM has achieved with Lotus Expeditor.
• Interoperability: Demonstrable integration with other communication vendors, namely Cisco - is needed to assure customers that they can preserve existing investments.

In terms of breaking new ground, I do believe that will come in the area of application development. One of the last sessions on embedding UC within LOB application (covered in this post) provided some hints of things to come re: a more visual design environment, integration with Windows Workflow - suggesting that we will see some type of UC-centric application server emerge over time.

The other dynamic being put into play from a partner perspective is "OCS as infrastructure" for other vendors. Both Mitel and Ericsson announced that they will build solutions on top of Microsoft's UC platform. These type of synergistic partnerships create additional entry barriers for vendors to compete at a functional level vs. core OCS capabilities that are made broader via such extensions.

What to do?

I expect most organizations to take a pragmatic, long-term view on Microsoft's UC platform. Decision makers will examine all of the components: Exchange, OCS, Exchange Unified Messaging, Round Table, Live Meeting and so on. For those organizations looking to move from LCS or to take their first step, the catch-phrase "get current & get stable" comes to mind. That means deploying OCS as a IM and presence platform to the point where you have stabilized operational and change management procedures. After that - the conservative move would be to turn-on web conferencing. This could also include hooking OCS up to room environments using Round Table. The more aggressive path would being to deploy VoIP/IP Telephony integration with existing PBX systems and opening up the UC platform to external parties. In any case, the intelligent (and obvious) strategy is to avoid the "big bang" approach. On top of the technology complexity, issues related to organizational readiness and governance will also slow down rapid deployment in large enterprise environments.

A more detailed analysis of Microsoft's UC strategy ("Office Communications Server 2007: A Pivotal Enterprise Decision") is available to Burton Group clients.