Beyond VoIP with UC

Microsoft's UC solution integrates with a company's existing telephony infrastructure. Mohd Shariff PA reports

A year into Microsoft’s assault on the enterprise voice/unified communications market, we know little about its products although much ink has flowed about the company’s foray into this segment.

The first thing we know is that Microsoft has quickly taken center stage—virtually all the vendors with IP PBX products have partnerships that allow said IP PBX to work with Microsoft’s Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007. In one way or another, all the IP PBX vendors are tailoring their marketing messages and sales pitches taking Microsoft and OCS into account. Together with Microsoft Exchange Server 2007’s e-mail and mobile features OCS completes the unified communications picture. Now customers can integrate voice-mail and e-mail into a single infrastructure. It also integrates with Outlook Voice Access—people can use any ordinary telephone to access Outlook calendar and directory information or use speech recognition to search the company directory.

Some large enterprises such as Royal Dutch Shell and Aditi have said publicly that they see Microsoft at the heart of the future enterprise voice/converged strategy. Pradeep Rathinam, President, Aditi Technologies said, “Aditi is an active service partner of early adopters of new technology. We see unified communications using Microsoft OCS 2007 as the next wave in collaboration efforts that benefit companies and enterprises, and as a solutions partner, we will help clients leverage our expertise in this technology to enable quick adoption and rapid return on their technology investments.”

Going forward, Microsoft will try to convince prospective buyers that next generation voice systems don’t have to match legacy products feature for feature; that new communications technologies such as e-mail and IM have fundamentally changed the game.

Cooperating with IP PBX vendors

Vibhu Ranjan, business lead, unified communications, Microsoft India said, “Today many companies are struggling to operate in an mix of disconnected systems—enterprises have deployed disintegrated solutions such as PBX systems for phone calls, messaging systems for voice mail, e-mail messaging, IM and more. It becomes an enormous cost over time for enterprises.”

Microsoft OCS is a piece of software, which works with an enterprise’s existing telephony infrastructure. Here the claim is not that it will completely eliminate the hardware infrastructure—IP PBX et al. In fact the vision is to reshape the world of enterprise communication. The ultimate goal would be to integrate all the ways in which we contact each other into a single environment, using a single identity that spans phones, PCs and other devices.

Microsoft has tie ups with Nortel and Cisco, the key players in telephony infrastructure. Enterprises continue to buy IP PBXs. Ranjan added, “We are offering them a choice that will reduce the heavy investment in hardware telephony infrastructure. Still OCS cannot replace the communication infrastructure. The key thing is that we are taking the software-based route.”

Minhaj Zia, business development manager, India & SAARC, Cisco said, “I would look at Nortel’s alliance with Microsoft and Cisco’s in unified communication as examples that clearly state that even Microsoft cannot think of communication without the hardware and networking. The elimination of the IP PBX is a debate which has been going on in the media, which we cannot validate, as Microsoft has not claimed this even after OCS 2007. OCS is not a complete solution, rather it is a server.”

The IP PBX is still important. OCS adds value to UC, but the underlying architecture remains much the same. A software-based approach has its own limitations in terms of performance, security and scalability.

Microsoft believes that the software approach enables it to deliver better manageability, more economical voice communications and greater opportunities for innovation to its customers. On the management side, rich interoperability between voice capabilities and the Active Directory gives IT departments a uniform way to provide staff with e-mail, IM and telephony.

A software-centric approach allows IT managers to take advantage of industry standard hardware that most organizations already have. The biggest return on a customers’ investment in unified technologies will come from integrating communications with business applications that people already have. Rather than maintaining VoIP as a separate infrastructure and keeping it apart from e-mail, IM and other forms of communication, Microsoft’s strategy is to provide a single platform to integrate all these and support rich interaction amongst them. Microsoft wants to build upon the success of Office and Exchange to be on top in collaboration as well.

Ranjan said, “There is more to a software-based approach. Nowadays communication is moving towards software-based applications rather than hardware. Over the last several years, the PC has replaced the telephone.”

Sukhvinder Ahuja, Microsoft Business Leader, Nortel India said, “UC will drive the next major advance in individual, team and organizational productivity in today’s 24x7, always-connected and increasingly mobile work environment.” He added that Microsoft’s software-based approach puts people at the center of communications by giving them a single identity across e-mail, voice-mail, VoIP call processing, instant messaging and video, and intuitively embedding communications capabilities into people’s everyday work processes, including the Microsoft Office System and third-party software.

For example, Marico Industries, a FMCG company has been using Microsoft SharePoint Server 2003, Microsoft Office Live Communication Server 2005 and Exchange Server 5.5. It has accelerated team collaboration significantly and helped share knowledge across the company. Microsoft is in close dialog with Marico Industries for a OCS 2007 unified communications deal.

Zia said, “We as vendors believe in reality—we make products from the ground-up based on customer feedback rather than pushing products down their throat.” He continued that there is a tremendous shift in UC infrastructure, but if someone says that it will be without the support of hardware infrastructure—it is hard to accept in the Indian context.

Partnerships and acquisitions

The UC battle is brewing; we have seen many acquisitions and partnerships during the last few months by key vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and Nortel. This activity has positioned Microsoft and IBM as the vendors with the most complete products in the emerging UC market. UC adoption is slow for now amongst Indian enterprises. However, analysts believe that this will change in the coming year, and that the technology will enter an early mainstream adoption phase.

IBM’s announcement to license Siemens OpenScape software for use with Lotus Sametime will make Sametime compatible with third party IP telephony, allowing users to manage telephone calls, instant messages and other methods of communication through a single desktop platform. The next few months are going to be critical to get those points across. Down the line, a software-centric approach would be one of the main selling points of unified communications. It is believed that this shift can save customers money and make it easier to integrate different vendor’s products.

Ranjan, added, “The majority of users out there in the market have a mixed environment and will continue to have one for years to come and Microsoft’s approach to UC has been to sign [interoperability] agreements for Microsoft OCS with IP PBX vendors and gateway manufacturers.” This means OCS will be compatible with 90 percent of legacy telephone and IT environments. Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Parlano, a Chicago based vendor that makes MindAlign—a group chat application—has added value to its offering.

Aditi Technologies is enhancing its practice to focus on Microsoft’s OCS 2007 as the reference platform for building collaboration and communication solutions, and for remote call control. Rathinam added, “Although only the trial version of OCS is presently available, Aditi is already involved in developing solutions [around it].” Since Aditi has been an early practitioner and adopter of Microsoft LCS and it has used the software as a development platform from the time Microsoft released its first version of LCS. The company is excited about OCS and its new features that it believes will revolutionize the way that organizations work especially vis-a-vis UC with VoIP, federation enhancements, and conferencing.

Nortel believes that its joint investment with Microsoft will help the communication industry reach an inflection point. Through this the two companies will collaborate deeply in development allowing them to rapidly deliver high quality and reliable solutions that will support mission critical communication in the enterprise. Ahuja added, “This opportunity is fantastic as far as our customers are concerned, and we will help them realize tremendous economic and business benefits from UC.” This is a plucky play for Nortel, and it will accelerate the move of its voice technology into software and working with Microsoft could transform the company into software and services leader.

An inflection point?

Microsoft’s entire game plan of delivering voice technologies in UC addressed by its OCS 2007 product and Exchange Server 2007 is software-centric as compared to the network- or hardware-centric approach. In the meantime, IBM and Microsoft have the two most complete UC product suites on the market and they will be fundamentally similar, however, their packaging and ease of integration will set them apart.

There are many obstacles to be overcome in making UC a success in the enterprise. Primarily there should be a systematic mechanism to translate the productivity improvements from UC.

Microsoft is challenging a lot of trends, if not history itself. It is bringing a different approach to voice communications, based on the new ways in which the world uses technology.