Gartner's UC Report Advises Use of Multiple Vendors
Gartner is now saying what we have been saying all along, Interoperability is the name of the game.
Gartner's new report, the 2009 Magic Quadrant for Unified Communications states, "The vendors would like to broaden the footprint they have within their existing customers and expand into new markets, whereas users, in many cases, would like to have the vendors interoperate effectively so they can get a high degree of functionality, and preserve and migrate their existing investments," said co-author Bern Elliot, a vice president and senior analyst at Gartner.
Gartner is recommending that organizations should seek interoperable products, not the offerings from Unified communications vendors pushing the concept of offering a turn-key, platform approach (telephony, voice mail, email, IM, conferencing and presence).
Bern Elliot added, "The features and functions most companies need are found in the best-of-breed products...What they want is a higher degree of unification ... and that's at odds with the vendors who see this as a market control or customer control issue...Using multiple vendors does take more effort .... But the benefits are worthwhile because you will end up with more choice and more control over your direction, and more control over your costs."
Ross Daniels, Cisco's Director of Unified Communications Solutions Marketing said in a recent interview "Certainly, whenever possible, we'd love people to use Cisco, but the clear reality is that there is a significant installed base of other suppliers' applications across unified communications,...As things have moved to an environment where communication means more than just voice, interoperability has become even more of a premium."
Microsoft has also acknowledged Interoperabilty. Moz Hussain, Director of Product Management in Unified Communications said that "Unified Communications doesn't have to stop with the products we deliver. A customer can take that and enrich it to their business needs...If another vendor has a solution they want to plug into our client experience .... we have the APIs (application programming interfaces) to allow them to do that."
Interoperability is more than just best of breed products working together. It is customers and vendors working together in an evolving, collaborative paradigm. We will be exploring that further in upcoming articles.
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