FYI<br>-------<br>
<div class="gmail_quote"><p>by I lazaar ..Feb 27, 2009</p>
<p>Back in October of 2007 I authored a column for <i>Business Communications Review</i>
that looked at Microsoft's entry into the VOIP market and asked whether
Microsoft had entered the market after most enterprise organizations
had already moved forward with alternate vendors for their VOIP plans,
meaning Microsoft was too late to gain significant VOIP market share.</p>
<p>At the time of writing, Nemertes Research indicated that 99% of
organizations we had interviewed that year had already selected a VOIP
vendor and were moving forward with at least a limited pilot, meaning
that for Microsoft to succeed in the VOIP arena, it would have to
convince potential customers to call a halt to existing plans and
switch to Microsoft's Office Communications Server as a VOIP platform.
Microsoft made this pitch by promising that it could cut the cost of
VOIP in half when compared to its competitors.</p>
<p>The customers for the most part didn't listen. The overwhelming
majority of participants in our 2008 research interviews said that the
only impact of Microsoft's entry into the VOIP space was to pay more
attention to the ability to integrate their existing or planned voice
systems with the Microsoft Office Communications server and client,
enabling features such as "click-to-call" and presence awareness for
desktop and Windows Mobile users.</p>
<p>Now, about a year and a half later, Microsoft is stepping up its
game with the release of OCS Release 2, adding a number of VOIP related
features including single-number reachability and dial-in audio
conferencing. Perhaps most importantly, OCS R2 adds support for SIP
trunking; already Microsoft has announced a number of partnerships with
service providers to bring SIP trunks to OCS installations. So with R2
is Microsoft back in the VOIP game?</p>
<p>Not yet. Microsoft still faces some of the same issues we heard
about in 2007. There's still no good option for remote site
survivability nor is there an E-911 capability just yet. Integrating
Microsoft into existing voice systems will typically require a
mediation server (or multiple servers). Choices for stand-alone desktop
phones are limited and most IT architects still don't trust
software-based phones running on Windows as their primary means of
communication. </p>
<p>But maybe we're asking the wrong question? Sure, Microsoft is happy
to offer OCS as a phone system replacement to those whose requirements
fit Microsoft's capabilities. But perhaps more importantly, OCS is the
trojan horse. Today, it offers desktop and mobile device control over
communications services, Microsoft's and partners, along with a robust
set of collaboration features such as instant messaging, persistent
chat, audio, video, and web conferencing, and so on. It integrates
presence into the full suite of Microsoft office products including
Exchange/Outlook and Office. Web-based clients enable non-Windows users
to become part of the Microsoft eco-system. And maybe, just maybe, as
OCS's phone feature list grows, and as OCS deployments grow, perhaps
with R3 Microsoft will begin to convince a growing number of its
customers that they really don't need that old IP-PBX anymore when
employees are already using OCS to make the majority of their calls.</p>
<p>As we conduct our 2009 round of interviews we're continuing to
gather data on the role of Microsoft in VOIP/UC planning. Stay tuned...</p>
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