Whither and Why the UC Desktop Client Wars?

I was chatting recently with a product manager for one of the larger UC vendors and he mentioned that one of his dev teams is working on trying to integrate their backend server with a competitor's desktop client (in effect, allowing their own desktop client to talk to their competitor's desktop client). I was astonished by this as it is so yesterday in thinking about how people collaborate now.

In the old days (circa 2010) there was this brooding approach to having a single application running on a desktop that would unify all channels of communication. On a PC desktop, the thinking went, people will only have the patience or affinity for one UC application and it needed to ubiquitously deliver all UC services through that one application. This approach reflected a "real estate" mentality towards the PC screen and a business model that was all about control of that real estate.

The simplified use case scenario for this approach is something along the lines that a client would desire a single application that seamlessly allows her to move from one communication mode to the next within that application and across any device. Clients (and enterprises) wouldn't want to clutter their desktops with multiple applications and bother with disparate authentication models. The quest was for one UC client to rule them all. In this context Lync versus WebEx had a lot of meaning and vendors spent a lot of money trying to convince enterprise customers that a single platform was the only thing that made sense.

A funny thing happened on the road to today - Apple's iOS enabled the "there's an app for that" paradigm that allows users to effortlessly switch between apps for whatever task they need to undertake. If they need to use Skype, Viber, ZipDX, Lync, WebEx - it didn't really matter as they can download the application and use it as needed. "Desktop real estate" stopped being a battleground and "ease of use" has become the new standard.

These days when I want to setup a UC meeting I will suggest a platform or allow them to suggest a platform - it truly does not matter. Checking the calendar for this week I see that I have 11 UC meetings enabled on four different UC platforms - only one of which my employer supports directly. One of the meetings was scheduled for a UC platform that requires registration to use - that is something I'm not interested in doing - so I asked the other party to shift to a different platform and she did without questioning the request.

It is not unusual at all today to have a conversation on WhatsApp and then seamlessly move to Viber for voice or to Skype for video and then circle back to LinkedIn or Twitter to publicly close out a conversation. In this context, a single unifying client application seems less relevant. Knowing corporate IT, its leadership will probably continue to trend to a single platform because it would be easier for them to control and manage - but experience suggests that boat has already sailed for end-users.