Microsoft’s Unified Communications Move: Call Waiting?

Microsoft’s rollout of its unified communications platform–Office Communications Server 2007–pushes Microsoft into the last unmolested part of the enterprise infrastructure budget untouched by the software giant in some way: telecom. And there was an impressive array of partners from that industry pulled in to help give Microsoft some voice network credibility,

But even with Nortel, Ericsson, and 50 other partners lined up to produce OCS-related hardware, the question remains whether a Windows-based server will establish a significant beachhead in the world of enterprise telecom infrastructure.

After all, Cisco has been beating down the unified messaging door in the corporate world for a long time now. I remember visiting the offices of the resurrected Cantor Fitzgerald and eSpeed in October of 2001, and seeing VoIP and unified communications hardware that Cisco had quickly wedged into their Rochelle Park, NJ. data center to help them get back up and running in less than 47 hours after the World Trade Center disaster, and thinking how bleeding edge it was then. Cisco and its partners and competitors in the IP telephony space made unified communications technology seem safe for enterprises through years of blood, sweat and tears.

Which is exactly why Microsoft waited until now to enter the market, and which is why they’re going to succeed.

“This is as profound as the shift from the typewriter to the PC,” Gates said in his keynote at the OCS launch. Perhaps he’s right, but Microsoft isn’t profoundly shifting anything other than the packaging. And nobody does the big feature roll-up and repackage better than Microsoft.

Take presence technology and live collaboration, for example. I was deploying Groove Networks’ products in that space in 1999 when “presence” was supposed to revolutionize collaboration the first time. Microsoft bought Groove, and, more importantly, got Ray Ozzie.

With all of the significant technology work done, Microsoft has been able to focus on the hard work of making the technology easier to use–or at least easy enough to use. And that’s why Cisco and the others in the space should be concerned. Windows on the right hardware can be relatively bullet-proof, and run in places where telco hardware lives now. And true or not, the percieved ease of use of a Windows-based solution–and its ease of integration into everything else in an Office-driven enterprise–makes it a whole lot more attractive than something with a Cisco label on it.