More Companies Joining the VoIP/Unified Communications Market: Is This Good for OCS Users?
Filed under: Instant Messaging (IM), OCS 2007, Unified Communications, Voice over IP
I received two interesting articles in this morning’’s Google Alerts for “Unified Communications.” (Got to stay informed!) What was interesting was that both articles discussed UC services others than Microsoft’’s. Both represent different ways to introduce the Unified Communications idea to businesses.
Both could also pose a problem to the whole Unified Communications/VoIP market.
The first article is: Skype Taps ShoreTel for Skype-to-SIP UC
Skype for SIP allows businesses to receive incoming calls from Skype users via SIP-enabled UC systems. ShoreTel customers can also make outgoing calls from their ShoreTel UC systems to other phones at Skype rates (very cheap).
The second is: Avaya Positioned in “Leader Quadrant” for Unified Communications by Gartner Inc.
Avaya’’s Aura is a UC package that interoperates with legacy communication systems like PBX. Much like OCS, it offers presence, IM, and SIP-based calling. It even works with Microsoft Office Communicator if you like.
What’’s Good About These Offerings
First off, it’’s competition in the Unified Communications market. Competition (even indirect competition) helps spur product improvement. Business users get better pricing, and more options.
Second, Skype for SIP makes for an interesting bridge between corporate Unified Communications and Skype. Skype, while mostly a consumer-level service, is popular for cheap international calls. This new offering could provide businesses a cheap-and-easy way to make those calls from now on.
What Problems These Offerings Could Cause
The UC market will get more confusing. With more and more UC services (some picking & choosing what they”ll offer) customers are left unsure of what they”ll get. That uncertainty will carry over onto other products, like OCS. When you don”t know if you”ll get what you need, you tend not to try.
Issues of security and scale crop up too. I”m sure Skype will take every precaution they can to protect business communications through their network. But the fact that Skype originated in the consumer arena (and most of its users are still consumers) will call their security effectiveness into question.
The consumer base raises questions about the very future of Skype, in fact. Will Skype make a further push into the business arena than this? Or is it just an add-on to nab business users? The latter may be true, according to comments on the topic. SkypeJournal.com actually decried the new Skype-to-SIP offering as “abandoning Skype’’s central tenets”!
So, IS This Good for OCS?
Actually, I think so. There’’s some competition (mostly from Avaya), but that can improve things for everyone. OCS 2007 also presents a very unified Unified Communications solution (if you”ll pardon my repetition there).
The best products aren”t necessarily the ones who are there first. They”re the products who are there to last. And with OCS 2010 on the horizon, this one’’s sticking around.
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