Switching Horses… at Cisco’s Collaboration Summit

Well, it’s official.  Cisco, the company that rebranded all its voice communications gear “Unified Communications” a couple of years ago, has demoted the term.  The ascendant star is “Collaboration”.  And I got some of the reasoning directly from John Chambers.  Here’s the story.

I’m at the Cisco “Collaboration Summit” in San Francisco where analysts, consultants, partners, and others have gathered to hear all about what’s new on the horizon.  If the title of the event didn’t give us a clue, then Alan Cohen’s opening remarks skewered it.  Third (or so) in a list of Cisco’s ongoing commitments was this gem:  “[Cisco will demonstrate] continued leadership in unified communications and other collaboration categories.”  In other words, UC is demoted to being one of a number of items under a collaboration umbrella.

Those of us toiling in these fields tend to view it in reverse — collaboration acceleration is one of a number of use case application classes under a UC umbrella.  It’s not just semantics.  There are many kinds of unified communications that have nothing to do with collaboration.  There are few if any kinds of collaboration that don’t involve communications. 

Clearly, the foreshadowing was there.  Here’s one example.  Cisco offers a very helpful array of technical newsletters on their subscription page:  http://www.cisco.com/web/offer/subscribe/index.html.  As I was scanning the list a month ago, I came across the following listing for one of the newsletters:  “Cisco Collaboration Insights (formerly Unified Communications Insight)”

Blink.  Not even a wake and decent burial.

Back at the Collaboration Summit, I asked John Chambers about this shift in positioning.  He had graciously turned up at the evening reception following his remarks on the opening day of the Summit.  I had the opportunity speak with him before he was whisked to his next event.  I pointed out the impeccable logic about our views regarding which umbrella covers what.  He quickly pointed out that logic has little to do with it; marketing and stirring up customer interest does.   

What he said was simple, “When I talk with CIOs and CEOs, no one gets very excited about ‘unified communications’.  But everyone is interested in ‘collaboration’!”  Case closed. 

What I have long feared and written about seems to be coming to pass.  “Unified communications” has been linked, apparently at least in the minds of the executives John speaks to, with what we call UC-User.  UC-U is about enhancing an individual’s ability to control personal communications.  And perhaps many also feel that UC is more closely associated with voice, rather than data, communications. 

But the benefit seen from enhancing individual communications is often thought of as vaguely improving productivity — too often quantified as the dreaded “saving 15 minutes per user per day.”  We’ve walked that road to nowhere before.  It’s especially treacherous in this economic climate.  And a big yawn for CXOs. 

Focusing on UC-U misses the other set of use cases, UC-B.  These solutions enhance business processes, and case studies show that UC-B produces ten times to benefits potential of UC-U.

Have we reached a tipping point?  IBM has long spoken about “unified communications and collaboration”.  Avaya had separated UC from CEBP (“communications enabled business processes”).  Now Cisco’s move. 

My view is that “unified communications” is still the best descriptor for the array of capabilities that is transforming business workflows and processes — for individuals, for workgroups, for departments, for entire enterprises, and extending to partners and customers.  In the rush for market dominance, let’s not complicate the job. 

What do you think?

4 Responses to "Switching Horses… at Cisco’s Collaboration Summit" - Add Yours

Art Rosenberg 11/10/2009 10:20:40 AM

Don,
Well done!
Maybe they can keep "Collaboration" as one form of business process activity, e.g., between design teams, business partnerships, etc. exchanging information). But when you get to the "How" of collaboration activities and the "Who" you are "collaborating" with, you then move to the domain of UC.
As you point out, business interactions are NOT all "collaborative!" This will be especially true for the growing role of UC in direct customer contacts, which should be of significant interest to CEO's and CIO's. So "Collaboration" really doesn't cover the territory of ALL business activity, but maybe UC in contact center solutions will prove to be the focal point for UC ROI.(What I call "Customer UC")
(See my comment on "collaboration" to Blair Pleasant's blog about VoiceCon "Musings".)

Rob Ingram 11/10/2009 2:50:39 PM

Interesting switching. What does this admit about the decline of voice as the primary mode of business conversation? I think it has already happened for many of our future workforce who already use the mobile phone more as a data than voice device.

Art Rosenberg 11/12/2009 6:31:34 PM

Rob- Valid point about the decline of voice telephony. As soon as real-time IM came into the business communications picture, the writing was now on the wall. Throw in UC-based integration of "click-to-call" and all the main reasons for "blindly" initiating a traditional phone call went out the window too! There's more to come as mobility and CEBP start to drive UC in the business and consumer markets.

Don Van Doren 11/13/2009 1:03:24 PM

Rob, you’re right in that voice is declining, certainly as a percentage of traffic. A key driver for this is that there are increasingly effective modes of communications which are often better than voice to achieve the purpose. Following on Art's point, as more effective presence capabilities become more widespread, voice calls that would have wound up in voicemail will be curtailed, as well as being displaced by IM or other modes. And yes, a new generation which grew up with thumbs dancing over keyboards and pads is changing things too.
Art, as you know we have long viewed collaboration acceleration as a primary application category for UC. Regarding customer interaction, I have increasingly been hearing “Chief Customer Officer”-types speak of “collaborating” with customers. Today, I think that’s more of an abstract goal than a set of proven capabilities. However, as we see more developments in customer-facing portals, secure presence links, and similar ways of building, well, collaboration with customers, I think that concept is going to become more of a reality. We are starting to see such collaborative interactions among supply chain business partners. It’s a short step to extending those links to customers, as well.