Posts Tagged ‘cisco’

Skype to put on suit and tie with help from Cisco and ShoreTel

Not content with over 500 million users using its voice and video chat, Skype now looks to make inroads into the corporate market and are in talks with Cisco and ShoreTel to sell its software. Why these two? Because their primary focus has been in corporate IP communications. Skype doesn’t want to deal with any TDM baggage often carried by Big Telecom.

The corporate communications market is obviously a very lucrative one. IDC pegs it at $203 billion. Even capturing 1% of that market is quite significant.

According to this BusinessWeek report, there are certainly challenges to come:

Persuading corporations to ditch their traditional carriers won’t be easy. “There are some major roadblocks to growing this in the large enterprise space,” says Jayanth Angl, an analyst at Info-Tech Research Group in London, Ont. Chief among them: giving IT managers more control. In industries such as health care and finance, companies need to track and monitor calls—something Skype doesn’t allow for. Skype also needs to convince potential customers that its service, which is sometimes criticized for poor quality, is reliable and secure enough for important business calls.

Well, that’s on top of some internal challenges, too:

To reorient the company, Chief Executive Officer Josh Silverman has replaced five people on his executive staff this year and cracked down on distracting side projects, which had some employees spending their time building 3D chess software. “Skype is serious about providing our business customers the tools and features that put them in control,” says David Gurle, who left Thomson Reuters in January to run Skype’s business division, where he’s doubling head count, to about 100 people.

Now that Skype is privatized by Silver Lake (eBay sold most of its stake for $2 billion), which interestingly also touts Avaya in its portfolio, it’s time to get serious about business. Yes, no more fooling around with 3D chess software (too bad, I wouldn’t mind seeing what they may have come up with). Skype executives are on a new mission to trim fat and boost sales resources in order to conquer the corporate world.

Slow economy slows worldwide IP telephony adoption

Melanie Turek of Frost & Sullivan posted some highlights of her latest research into the worldwide enterprise telephony market. To me it looks to be a good snapshot of the overall global economy, too…

Traditional systems made up 25.8 percent of total line shipments, declining at a rate of 18.1 percent year over year. NEC was the undisputed market leader in this category, with around 3.6 million TDM lines shipped; it’s followed by Panasonic and Siemens.

The decline in traditional-line shipments is expected to be even greater in the coming years as customers continue to acknowledge the value of IP communications and vendors gradually phase out legacy TDM/KTS PBX systems.

This is a fairly impressive number — TDM lines still account for 1/4 of total shipments. And if we fool ourselves for a moment into thinking that the economy is no worse than last year’s and there is no decline, then the TDM lines add up to 1/3 of total shipments. NEC, being the “undisputed market leader” in TDM shipments, continues to enjoy a slightly better economic condition in Asia whereas North American and European markets are spiraling deeper into trouble.

I also believe that traditional-line shipments will decline in the coming years, but I’m not so sure about the “even greater” part. I think the lack of any uptick in the global economy — at least in the coming year or two — will prevent customers from leaping into the IP pool. Vendors may push for IP communications solutions, but customers won’t be buying in droves, instead opting to milk the most out of their TDM PBX systems. After all, if it ain’t broke, why fix it? Especially when money’s tight.

Cisco was the market leader in total line shipments, with 13.6 percent market share, followed by NEC (13.3 percent) and Avaya (12.9 percent).

There’s only a 3.3 percent difference between Cisco, the IP leader, and NEC, the TDM leader, in total lines. That’s not a whole lot. There’s still a lot of TDM lines to be phased out, eh?

Traditional systems made up 21.4 percent of market revenues, declining at a rate of 27.3 percent. NEC was the market leader with a 33 percent market share, followed by Panasonic, Avaya, Nortel and Siemens, in that order.

IP systems (converged and native IP) accounted for 78.6 percent of market revenues, declining at a rate of 24.2 percent. Avaya’s voice system market revenues were greater than Cisco’s, with a total market share of 17.1 percent.

It’s no surprise that both traditional and IP systems showed revenue decline. It’s no surprise, either, that revenues from IP systems command such a big chunk of the pie. After all, going from TDM to IP requires a lot more hardware and professional services.

Overall, Avaya is the enterprise telephony platform revenue market leader with a market share of 15 percent, followed by Siemens, Cisco, NEC and Alcatel-Lucent.

Come on, Alcatel-Lucent… You can do better. Put those high-profile acquisitions to good use. Being the laggard in a market which the leader only commands 15 percent is a red flag, especially when the economy isn’t getting any better soon.

All this crazy tablet nonsense (talking about you Avaya, RIM, and Cisco)

Imitation is the highest form of flattery, but come on, this whole tablet craze has gone too far.

So Apple came out with the blockbuster iPad tablet, and now everyone and their dogs are making one. Yes, I’m talking about you, Avaya, RIM, and Cisco.

What I find funny is that the PC companies — namely Microsoft and HP — abandoned their tablet projects once the iPad was imminent and proved to be a huge success, but it’s the communications companies that have a hard time letting go.

I’m not saying that the iPad is the end-all of all tablet devices. No, let’s hope not. I do want to see competing devices from Microsoft and HP (especially using the recently acquired Palm webOS). These are the companies that have been in the computing business for decades and have a clue about these devices.

But for companies like Avaya, RIM, and Cisco to venture into the tablet alternate universe is not productive. In fact, I dare say that it’s more of a marketing ploy than anything else — generate buzz, ride the iPad’s coattails, show ‘em we’re hip. After all, it’s not too hard to make one these days: source the cheap hardware from China, slap on the OS (be in Android, Windows, or Blackberry), and announce it to the world.

But guess what? There won’t be companies lining up to buy one of these babies.

You should know better, guys. And I’m not talking about not challenging Apple because you are targeting business users. I’m talking about your denial that communications today is more about applications than about the device. Leave the device to the likes of Apple, Microsoft, HP, and IBM to design and make. You are supposed to be leaders in the communications biz, but why am I still carrying an iPhone and a Blackberry and still staring at my ugly desk phone? Now you also want me to carry your tablet?

We’re all accustomed to the fact that audio capabilities aren’t limited to phones anymore. A lot of the emphasis on these new tablets are about video capabilities, but this is 2010 and we also know that smartphones have the horsepower for video, too. So really, is there the need for a business tablet?

So here’s my advice: Abandon your tablet projects and hire more developers and UI experts to focus on applications. If you insist on a tablet, then OEM it from somebody who knows it better than you. Partner with the tablet makers to ensure your app is well-designed for their device. But for the sake of business please stop it with the tablet business.

InfoComm: Video of Cisco’s interoperability in action

Here’s a video from John Stepp, President of Free Tech Consulting, taken yesterday at the Cisco demo of its telepresence interoperability during InfoComm Las Vegas.

Mike Baird of Cisco discusses interoperability enhancements to the Cisco product line from the Cisco Telepresence Room at InfoComm 2010 in Las Vegas.  Over 39,000 people are attending the event that showcases the latest advancements in audio visual technology.

Is Microsoft playing both sides of the interoperability game?

Jamie Stark, Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, posted some updates on the UC Group Team Blog, starting off by addressing recent developments in interoperability:

First off – on Wednesday, May 19^th, industry leaders including HP, Juniper Networks, Logitech / LifeSize, Polycom, and Microsoft announced the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF). UCIF is a non-profit, open alliance of worldwide technology companies that will develop interoperability profiles, certification, and testing programs in order to enable UC interoperability scenarios. The UCIF’s vision is to enable interoperability of UC hardware and software across enterprises, service providers, and consumer clouds, as a means of protecting customer’s existing investments, simplifying their transition to more extended UC networks, and generating incremental business opportunity for all stakeholders in the ecosystem. To learn more about UCIF, including the growing list of companies who have joined the forum, check out the website at www.ucif.org

Of course, Microsoft has been delivering practical interoperability solutions to our unified communications customers since the launch of the UC Open Interoperability Program, or UCOIP, in 2007.   The UCOIP is a qualification program for gateways, IP-PBXs, and SIP trunks services that is intended to ensure that customers have seamless experiences with the setup, support, and use of qualified telephony infrastructure with Communications Server.  Any IP-PBX, SIP/PSTN gateway, or SIP Trunking vendor that meets the qualification requirements, conforms to the specifications, and successfully completes the third party testing performed byTekVizion labs will have their solution published on the UCOIP web site.

The establishment of the UCIF has been welcomed news — for the most part — by vendors and industry analysts. Still missing in its membership are biggies like Cisco and Avaya, and the former doesn’t seem to have any intention of becoming an UCIF member anytime soon. Microsoft gladly signed up to be a founding member, and the company historically actively participates in any sort of industry forum because it knows it has a lot of influence being the top software company in the world.

But as Stark stated, Microsoft launched UCOIP in 2007. Don’t let the name fool you, however. Even though the “O” stands for “Open,” it really only pertains to interoperability with Microsoft’s own communications software. The official overview of the program:

The qualification program for SIP/PSTN Gateways, IP-PBXs and SIP Trunking Services ensures that customers have seamless experiences with setup, support, and use of qualified telephony infrastructure and services with Microsoft’s unified communications software and Microsoft Office Communications Online (BPOS-Dedicated).

So on the one hand Microsoft wants in on UCIF, but continues to spread the Interoperability Gospel According to Microsoft.

One has to wonder: How committed is Microsoft in making its UC products interoperable in the general sense?