While Unified Communications wasn’t quite the rage it was at VoiceCon, it still got a few good mentions at Interop Spring 2007 in Las Vegas, as well as three sessions led by the UCStrategies.com team (www.ucstrategies.com).  The keynotes by three CEOs, John Chambers (Cisco), Mike Zafirovski (Nortel), and Lou D'Ambrosio (Avaya), all included significant mention of UC and how important it is to each of those companies as they move forward. As expected, they all had a different take on UC.

At VoiceCon, unified communications was Cisco’s term de jure. At Interop, it was “collaboration and Web 2.0.” Chambers stated that the next wave of productivity will be based on collaboration and Web 2.0, which includes or encompasses UC, social networking, telepresence, mash ups, and more. I was surprised to hear Chambers position UC as part of collaboration, rather than the other way around. While I expected him to state that unified communications will change business productivity and business models, Chambers stated that collaboration and Web 2.0 will do this. Chambers defined Web 2.0 as technology tools to enable collaboration effectively, and that these tools, as well as collaboration, are introducing a new era of productivity, where enterprises can see productivity gains of not just 1-2%, but 3-5% per year (as in the heady early days of the Internet and e-commerce). Chambers also noted that consumers are driving product innovation and that social networking is making a foray into enterprise businesses.

With the help of his very able demo sidekick, Jim Grubb (who never fails to entertain and enlighten), Chambers demoed using Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator to find a local expert. Using mashups (why is Google Maps always the mashup demo?), they were able to do a search and identify which experts in the company were available and where they were located on a map. Cisco’s telepresence capabilities were also on display during the demo, showing how simple it is to set up a telepresence session on the fly.

Mike Zafirovski of Nortel was consistent with his term de jure at both events – hyperconnectivity. Zafirovski discussed the need for hyperconnectivity based on the difficulty individuals have when trying to connect and communicate with others. He also noted that Nortel’s R&D spending in the enterprise has increased by 33% - not an insignificant number. Part of this spending I suspect is tied to the Innovative Communication Alliance (ICA) with Microsoft. Zafirovski showed a video of Indiana University, a Nortel/Microsoft customer that has found significant increase in productivity at the desktop. He also stated that Nortel has about 100 customers for ICA so far, with hundreds in the pipeline. And Nortel introduced new branding – “Business Optimized Networks.”

Avaya’s Lou D'Ambrosio also spoke about unified communications, but in the context of Avaya’s Intelligent Communications focus. He noted that UC is all about collaboration and the ability to reach anyone, anyway, yada, yada (my words, not his), and that Avaya provides a variety of options for customers to communicate, such as softphone, mobile phone, deskphones, etc. The One-X Mobile Edition, for example, brings the feature set of your office phone to your finger tips. If the phone rings in your office, it will also ring simultaneously on your mobile device. When you answer mobile device, you have the same functionality as on your desk phone. And with the Traverse acquisition, Avaya can now support over 500 devices.

D’Ambrosio also mentioned that there are 100,000 users in a large financial organization using the Avaya/Microsoft LCS offering, which shows that customers are starting to go beyond evaluation of UC solutions, to really implementing them. Building on its Websphere alliance, Avaya is also working with IBM to do click-to-conference (not to be confused with the click-to-call that Avaya is doing with Microsoft). D’Ambrosio noted that conferencing has the quickest ROI in the industry, with an average 6-9 month ROI. This isn’t surprising, based on the basic travel expenses that can be reduced with conferencing. He also showed some pretty cool things that Avaya is doing with Lenova PCs using biometric fingerprint identification and authorization (although this was already shown at VoiceCon). And of course D’Ambrosio discussed Avaya’s Communication Enabled Business Process (CEBP) offering, which automates business process handoffs with stimulus and response triggers, leading to the “no delay enterprise.”

All in all, I’d say unified communications, while not the star of Interop, got a pretty good showing at the keynotes.