Unified Communications (UC) is a chimera – in the genetic rather than the mythological sense. In genetics, a chimera is an organism composed of two or more genetically distinct tissues. UC is exactly like that. It contains the distinct genetic tissue of voice communications, with definite traces of VoIP, conferencing, single contact number, voice mail, mobile telephony and so on. However, it also contains genetic material that suggests email, chat and collaboration.

If you ask Avaya, Nortel or Siemens, what UC is, they will push the voice and telecomms view, while IBM and Microsoft will emphasize the “office software” aspects of UC. I became acutely aware of the distinction at the recent Avaya analyst conference. Conceptually, UC is what the term suggests – it unites telephony, conferencing, email, voice mail, instant messaging, video, and collaboration across a variety of user interfaces and devices.

UC should unify all such services reliably, securely and flexibly – so that user ends up using the communications rather than trying to manage it. Given the fact that UC spans multiple devices; phones, PCs, laptops and mobile devices, unification is not a trivial trick to pull off – especially when it involves intelligent tricks like knowing where someone is (the term that’s used is “presence”) and how to reach them. Avaya’s UC offering is comprehensive, functional and not particularly expensive for large installations (it can come in at about $150 per seat depending on options chosen). I’m told that competitive offerings from Nortel, Siemens and Cisco also have points to recommend them.

Currently though, the market is proprietary and in the throws of standardisation around SIP. SIP is a protocol for establishing and managing communications sessions – basically SIP is to communications, what SQL is to relational database. Avaya stole a march on its competitors this year, when it acquired the UK company, Ubiquity, which was building a SIP platform. Avaya will surely bolt this on to its UC offering as soon as it can and is thus likely to be first to market with SIP compliant UC. (It only hinted at its plans at the conference).

Avaya is not too concerned about its traditional competition in this market, but seems to be a little skittish of Microsoft. Microsoft has been rattling its sabre recently, claiming that it will revolutionize the UC market with aggressive pricing and innovative products. Recently Bill Gates even got in on the act. Microsoft believes that it can sell a variety of UC servers in the same volumes that it sold Exchange email servers and it is possible that it will.

There are, however barriers for Microsoft to leap:

• Typically the communications buyer in an organization is not already a Microsoft customer.
• Microsoft will have to prove that its products are “carrier grade” and if they are not, they’ll have to re-engineer accordingly.
• This is not a single vendor play and given the chimera that UC is, it is not going to become a single provider market any time soon. Therefore “playing nice with others” is going to be important and SIP will have a big role in this. Microsoft’s venture into SIP currently looks very 1.0.

Of course, all the UC vendors will accommodate and work with Microsoft, while at the same time working against it – in the spirit of co-opetition. But I’m not convinced that Microsoft is going to radicalize this market. It may even start to see some of its cherished communications components get eaten “from below”. Why pay for Microsoft’s “Live Meetings” for example, when you can get the same service free – absolutely free – from DimDim. And why not outhost the email to Google – as many small businesses are now doing.

This is a posting in the Telephony/Communications Integration series of Focus postings.