Earlier this week, Cisco made several announcements at their Collaboration Summit. Some of the announcements were pretty significant; some were old news, even released products. Overall, it was a clarification and evolution of their Unified Communications portfolio including a new name - Cisco Collaboration. The new portfolio is squarely aimed against Microsoft, and borrows many elements from Avaya and IBM.

I've never been a fan of the term "Unified Communications". It is too vague and become to mean almost anything. Cisco felt the best way to resolve the confusion was a new name: "Cisco Collaboration" which admittedly is more positive in connotation. For Cisco, collaboration includes unified communications, though some believe collaboration is a subset of unified communications. Don Van Doren discusses this in a post, and shares John Chambers' defense of the change: “When I talk with CIOs and CEOs, no one gets very excited about ‘unified communications’.  But everyone is interested in ‘collaboration’!” The reality is Cisco is diffusing collaboration to include all the elements of UC; so now email, voice mail, mobile integration, presence, etc. are all now collaboration tools. I'm not confident it will reduce any confusion or ambiguity, and reminds me a bit of the great "Less Filling, Great Taste" debate.

This post is about Cisco's news, so I will use "Collaboration". And as everyone knows, collaboration starts with.... a new network. If a picture is worth a kiloword, than video must be worth a lot more. Cisco's vision includes lots of video. So much video, that the current IP networking infrastructure needs upgrades. Cisco MediaNet products offer more intelligence for the routing of rich media/video by being media aware and end point aware. If video gets pervasively used for multiple types of collaboration, the network overhauls may be more lucrative for Cisco than the collaboration part.

This clearly sheds light on Cisco's interest in Tandberg; a videocam on every desk, an HDTV studio in every office. The Cisco Collaboration announcements were filled with video. New video desktop devices (phones), a gateway between Cisco's Telepresence and WebEx Meeting Center, a intercompany media engine that supports video telephony, Cisco's Show and Share for sharing videos, even a telepresence directory hosted by Cisco.

Next comes new endpoints, introducing the 8900 and 9900 series devices.  Redefining the top of the line - pretty much everything you might expect in a high-end phones plus a bit more. A trophy on any executive's desk. In addition to a long list of features such as HD audio, USB ports, VGA color touchscreen display, video support, etc. they even include green features of recycled plastics and a "deep sleep" power saving mode. These fall into the Lexus Hybrid category of green. The question on my mind is if they will get them on the set of 24 in time for the upcoming season.

The endpoints are indicative of the differences among enterprise players. Cisco continues to go for the high-end, now with camera phones. The competitors are not embracing video so aggressively probably because it could indirectly benefit Cisco. Where they do embrace video it is generally on the computer rather than the phone. Avaya offers one video phone (made by Tandberg). Avaya,as with most of the traditional PBX players, are sticking to proprietary endpoints, just not as robust as Cisco's new models. I expect competitive pressures to squeeze these proprietary phones - squeezed between feature rich endpoints and SIP phones. Microsoft prefers the desktop PC as the phone (technically more expensive than Cisco's phones), and relies on USB props for a phone effect. Microsoft's lack of support of the 722 codec (HD) is becoming more notable. IBM can't be bothered with phones and prefers to outsource the voice part of the UC equation to one of several partners. Then comes the SIP gang; Siemens, Aastra, and Digium leading with SIP endpoints. They benefit from the lowest cost devices but limited phone-based features. Though some SIP phones do support video.

Speaking of SIP, Cisco didn't rename their "Cisco Unified Communications Manager 8.0 Session Manager Edition" to reflect collaboration for good reason. This product is conceptually and functionally most similar to Avaya's Aura SIP Session Manager which does include strong collaboration tools through its IMS and SOA architecture. The Cisco version only supports trunking services such as interconnection and least cost routing. Further, it appears to Brian Riggs that not only is the Cisco version comparatively limited, but requires more servers.

The bigger competitive guns were aimed at Microsoft, particularly with WebEx Mail which offers native Outlook support for hosted email, calendar, and contacts. This is a double-gulp big-pill for enterprise buyers; migrate away from Exchange...to the cloud. IBM, Cisco, and Microsoft strongly believe that email is integral to the UC collaboration solution. The traditional players, Avaya, Mitel, Shoretel, Aastra etc. are sticking to the best of breed approach and inter-operate with multiple messaging solutions. Though Cisco's approach is fairly unique in that it endorses the Outlook client in an Microsoft Exchange-less environment. Cisco is also signaling it is okay to use Microsoft's Office Communicator client with their WebEx services for presence/IM (without Microsoft Office Communication Server). Mixing clients and servers reminds me a bit of the Palm PRE/iTunes fiascoes. So to be safe, clients can use Cisco's WebEx client and an AJAX webmail client. WebEx Mail includes integration with Blackberry and iPhone mobile solutions as well as a wireless/FMC solution for Nokia phones.

Other than WebEx, the cloud is not that cental to Cisco's collaboration vision. Several competitors are embracing virtualization and Siemens is embracing public cloud computing. In fact, Cisco announced so many new on-premise server products this week that their cloud pitch for email seemed a bit out of place. It was realistically their only option; you can't build an Exchange alternative overnight, and clearly there is no room for Exchange in Cisco's vision. Exchange is a pivotal part of Microsoft's UC solution as it's the message store for fax, email, and voice mail. Exchange is also under attack from IBM and more recently Google. Google's Apps Gmail fairs well against WebEx - both services are priced about the same but include wildly different options making direct comparison difficult. 

Email and presence are the key cards being played by enterprise UC vendors; two cards that the traditional telecom players can't play easily.The irony is presence/IM and email are effectively free in the consumer space - yet many CIOs are convinced IM/Presence via ICMP is not secure for the enterprise. While there are some security threats in some IM products/services; I don't buy into the notion of closed presence and IM. I don't see how an enterprise can manually/mutually federate with partners that meets the needs of all employees. I also believe presence/IM should be open (but unlisted) like phone numbers and email addresses. But if the requirement becomes secure federated presence - then the UC starting point effectively becomes Microsoft, IBM, or Cisco. IBM doesn't even offer a native voice solution, but is now considered a major UC player; a fascinating and sad evolution for voice.

In a not so decent past, Avaya and Nortel fought over digital PBX market leadership. Nortel and Avaya had similar visions - voice mail, call centers, phones, etc. Then came the VoIP disruption and enter Cisco. Now UC/Collaboration which appeared at first to be a maturing VoIP is instead another disruption. Today (actually tomorrow), it is Avaya/Nortel defending its leadership against several UC upstarts including; Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and Siemens - all with radically different visions of collaboration and communications.  But the list isn't even complete yet; HP and Google appear to be on the sidelines. Microsoft and HP have a strategic Unified Communications pact (Frontline) which may take on new meaning after HP's surprise acquisition of 3Com. But if Cisco sells their collaboration vision, then the competition will be scrambling to fill their portfolio's holes.


Dave Michels blogs regularly about voice telecommunications at Pin Drop Soup.