It is going to be an interesting Enterprise Connect in Orlando this year from March 17 - 20, 2014. There is a shift in the tone to the new reality of enterprise communications. As interpreted from the agenda, the new reality could be summarized as:
The Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCI Forum), announced today that it has signed an agreement with the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), to accelerate the adoption of open Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in UC. The agreement establishes a collaborative relationship in the area of SDN integration in unified communications environments. This is an important step in coordinating how UC platforms will interface with SDN-based network services ensuring a better UC user experience.
Why hasn't the UCaaS channel caught fire?
During my recent years in Lync Partner engineering and later as the SaaS Channel manager at Microsoft, I had a chance to meet and work with many dozens of talented and interesting partner executives. These are (mostly) men who were approaching UC as a Service (UCaaS) from one of three perspectives:
In the past week Avaya reported financial results for their second quarter of fiscal 2013 (quarter ended March 31, 2013) and Cisco reported financial results for their third quarter of fiscal 2013 (quarter ended April 27, 2013). These two companies are the market share leaders for new shipments of enterprise telephony stations in North America and are two of the top market share holders on a global basis.
LG-Ericsson USA has announced the North American launch of iPECS-LIK, a full-featured business communications product family that enables pure IP communications for business applications. It has the functionality of a traditional PBX, while also providing features designed to enhance productivity, such as voice and video conferencing and data collaboration.
Vertical Communications has announced the release of MBX IP, an IP telephony system made for multi-site small businesses. Its release completes Vertical's line of next-gen telephony products, placing it alongside SBX IP and Wave IP to provide solutions that help businesses boost their efficiency and productivity.