Is Microsoft's Purchase of Linkedin a Good Idea?

Big story and a big question. It's not quite at the heart of the UCC world, but close enough that it needs to be further understood. That's what we addressed in our latest UCStrategies podcast, and it's running on our portal now.

This is Microsoft's biggest acquisition to date, and their track record hasn't be great, generally overpaying and under-delivering. They are Skype's third owner, and you'd be right to question why this name has taken over from Lync, but clearly, they're sticking to it. MSFT paid a similar amount for Nokia, which was written off about a year ago, and a few years before that their pricy acquisition of aQuantive met a similar fate.

They have never been able to crack the mobile market, so precedent does not suggest Linkedin will be a home run. For that much money, it better be, but on the other hand, MSFT can afford it. Perhaps more importantly, they can't afford to miss big opportunities, especially in the business market, which is easier to monetize than the consumer space.

Linkedin reportedly reaches an audience that's bigger than Skype - some 430 million vs. some 300 million - and they've built a highly engaged community with solid business value, whereas Skype remains largely a low cost or free consumer-grade communications platform. No idea what the synergies may be between those two worlds, and it sure will be interesting to see how it unfolds.

Of course, there are concerns that the Linkedin community will become a sales channel for MSFT products, and if it's not handled right, another pureplay business/professional network platform will surely emerge to give that community an independent alternative. Lots of angles to explore, and there's more on the podcast, so I hope you give it a listen.

Is Interactive Intelligence an Exponential Organization?

Unless you saw Salim Ismail speak at the recent Interactions 2016 conference, this title may sound cryptic. Previously, I didn't know what an exponential organization was either, but now I do. After hearing Salim, I began wondering how well his ideas - which I really like - apply to the host company, Interactive Intelligence.

The event itself was great as usual, and I posted briefly about that here. This bigger question - not quite exponentially bigger, but still worth asking - needed a different forum, and to address it, I put on my UC Expert hat. My writeup is running now on our UCStrategies portal, and tomorrow I'll be moderating our next podcast where I'll get my fellow UC Experts to weigh in on this as well. Your comments, as always, are welcome!

Tower of Babel and Texting, plus a few updates

Gee, time flies when you're heads-down writing.

Just realized I haven't blogged all week, and there is stuff to talk about. My ShoreTel webinar on Tuesday was really well attended, and with UCStrategies, we did a timely podcast this week about the Microsoft/Linkedin deal - I think we'll be pondering that one for a while. Have also been finishing up two new white papers and an e-book, and just got the proofs back on an upcoming magazine feature I wrote about the future of work.

I'm also quite excited about my long-in-the-works refresh of my blog and website. I've got a great team working on this, and we're merging these sites, so finally there will be one place for all of my content, along with an updated overview of my services and how I work with clients. New projects are about to start with new clients, so it's never dull around here. Oh, on the fun front, it looks like I'll be doing another gig with the SIPTones at the annual SCTC conference this fall in Kansas City - yee haw!

So, Tower of Babel? Almost forgot. This is about our most recent UCStrategies podcast, where we focused on how various text and messaging applications are complicating the UCC landscape. This keeps folks like us gainfully employed, but it's getting even harder now for decision-makers to know where to place their bets. I think our collective thoughts on this might help, so if you missed it, here's the link.

Mitel/Polycom Deal - our UCStrategies Podcast

If you're still wondering about what this deal means in the UCC space, our recent podcast on the Mitel/Polycom deal will be time well spent. As you may know, our group at UCStrategies covers the gamut among both analysts and consultants, so collectively, we've got a pretty good handle on the implications for both companies and the market in general.

I know this will be old news for some, but I've been away/offline 9 days, and didn't catch any fish. It was a great trip, though, but that's for another time.

For now, I hope you visit the UCStrategies portal, and give our podcast a listen. Comments as always, are welcome, and we'd love to hear whether you think this form of consolidation is good or bad for the market.

Otherwise, back to work, and I have a ton of postings to catch up on and share, so more to come.

Lowering the Barriers to UC with the Cloud - My New Post

My writing takes many forms - as it has to these days - and one of them is on a partnership basis. Regular followers will know that I'm part of UCStrategies, and contribute a monthly column - new one coming next week - along with participating in our regular podcasts.

Another is authoring thought leadership on behalf of sponsors who engage with UCStrategies to help educate the market about industry trends and new technologies. AT&T is one such sponsor, and as part of an ongoing program with them, I was tasked to write about how I see the cloud as an enabler for UC adoption. There are lots of reasons for enterprises to push back on the cloud, but plenty of others to embrace it, and that's what I focused on in this article.

AT&T may be the sponsor of this series, but the content is largely mine. The writing may have gone through many corporate review cycles, but as you'll see, it's my independent voice in the article. There's always a balance to strike with sponsors, but I think you'll agree it's pretty objective, and hopefully you'll find it helpful as you think about UC and the best way to get full value.

The post is running now on the UCStrategies portal, and if you like my writeup, look around a bit, as there are some other articles there from the AT&T series that are you'll enjoy just as well.

What Millennials, Mobility and 5G Mean for UC - My Channel Partners Takeaways

I produced a series of spotlight profile posts for the GetVoIP blog around the recent Channel Partners conference, but I had more to say specifically about UC&C. That's what I focused on for my latest contribution to the UCStrategies portal.

As the title implies, these three factors all have an impact on where UC&C is heading, and when you mash them all together, it's pretty profound. I got a really good sense of that from a panel at Channel Partners comprised of Millennials, and moderated by Verizon. If you're willing to listen to the younger generation rather than dismiss them, you can learn a lot, and that's the tack I'm taking in this writeup.

We have lots of great content on the portal, and hopefully you'll read my post, and from there check out what my fellow UC Experts have to say. Sharing is encouraged as only, and if you share for me, I'll gladly share for you!

Vertical Communications - Can They Succeed Selling Direct?

That's the big question in my mind after attending the analyst event hosted by Vertical Communications earlier this month in Dallas. I've followed the company - albeit not that closely - since their last analyst event in 2012, but they're certainly on-trend now for the UC space. We heard a lot about their cloud platform, a consistent experience across all endpoints, WebRTC, customer engagement, focus on vertical markets, mobile support and even contact center. In fact, there wasn't much they didn't touch on - well, perhaps social media, but that's fine.

Clearly, their palette is quite broad now, and while Vertical can attack many business problems this way, it's hard to nail down what they're really good at. Of course, versatility is a virtue, but when you're not that well known - as is the case with Vertical - there's a risk of not being able to stand out and a make a winning first impression.

One way Vertical is addressing this is by building their value proposition around "workflows", and they did a great job articulating - and demonstrating that - with us in Dallas. I think this can be an effective approach, as it takes them out of the arena trying to sell against the established players who are selling a more recognizable value proposition in the form of UC, telephony, conferencing, video, collaboration, etc.

While it's debatable whether these value propositions are themselves all that strong anymore, rather than focus on these technologies and communications solutions, Vertical's mantra is on what these things enable - workflows - and they're sticking to it.

Whether there's a long term business case for that remains to be seen, but the bigger question for me is can they be successful with a direct sales model? That's another mantra we heard in Dallas, and I think they have a pretty strong rationale. It won't be an easy road, but this is a path that could distinguish them more than anything else, and since there's no proven recipe for success in this shape-shifting space, who's to say it can't work?

That may be all you need to read from me about Vertical, but I do have more to say, and wearing my UC Expert hat, my take-aways have been posted now on the UCStrategies portal.  While you're there, I encourage you to read another post about Vertical from colleague Blair Pleasant, which includes a couple of video interviews she conducted there with Vertical executives.

Is Presence Dead? Our Latest UCS Podcast

For as long as I can remember, I've been calling presence the glue that holds UC together. Just as Unified Messaging - remember that? - was a big step forward when telephony stood alone from everything else, presence was really the key enhancement that took UC to the next level past UM.

Today, we take presence for granted, but early on, it was the most efficient way to manage day to day interactions with co-workers. That said, people were just as likely to use it as another filter or gatekeeper to make them LESS accessible. Why? Because presence was making them TOO accessible, so by setting your status to DND, the unwanted intrusions would drop off, and then you could actually get some work done.

Well, that's just one take on presence, and however you look at it, there's a strong case to be made that it's relevance has passed. It's not going to disappear anytime soon, but a lot of things have to go right - and a lot of rules have to be universally followed to get full value from presence. Basically, people rely more on text/IM/SMS now when they want to find someone, and there's not much etiquette any more about bothering people. It's widely expected that with mobility you're always available or at less reachable, and in that case you really don't need presence.

That's the gist of what we covered on our last UCStrategies podcast, and there were strong views on both sides of the coin. It's a fascinating topic, and yet another example of how the UC space just keeps morphing along. The podcast was moderated by Phil Edholm, and I hope you give it a listen - here's the link.

Unify Analyst Conference - UCStrategies Podcast Review

Following their recent conference, Unify has been the topic du jour lately on UCStrategies, and that has culminated with our latest podcast. Several of us shared our thoughts on the current state of Unify, which is now in the larger hands of Atos.

Lots of implications business-wise, but also for where things are going for Unify in the UC and collaboration spaces. I'm parsing these out because they are respectively served by OpenScape and Circtuit. If you follow me, you'll know that I view these as different spaces, but they are often talked about in the same breath and that's not always a good idea.

That's a taste of what we covered on the podast, where views were shared from UC Experts who did and did not attend the conference. The podcast is posted now on the site, and my comments start at the 14:51 mark. If you want to follow further, you can start with my recent UCStrategies post about Circuit, and from there, links to posts from other UC Experts.

Unify and Circuit Redux - My Take, Second Time Around

Got back late last night from ITExpo, and the week prior, I was at the Unify analyst/consultant conference, so I'm pretty showed-out for now. At ITExpo, I moderated a panel about communication and collaboration, and at Unify, we got an extensive update on the business, including Circuit. Things look better now than when Circuit made its debut in late 2014, and there are some relevant ideas from my ITExpo panel to reinforce that.

I've pulled those ideas together for my current UCStrategies column, and it's running now on the site. If you're trying to make sense of the fast-changing collaboration space, and/or how well Unify is currently positioned, I think you'll find this a good read. If you do that, I hope you pick up on the links in my analysis, as my UCStrategies colleagues Blair Pleasant and Phil Edholm have also shared their thoughts, but more so about the overall Unify story.

2016 Outlook - One More For You - UCStrategies Podcast

This one may have gotten lost in the shuffle with all the other 2016 previews. Our last UCStrategies podcast was a roundup of what we expect to see this year. Think of it as our State of the Nation for UC&C.

Oh, in case you missed it, if you want more of the same, but looking back at 2015 highlights, here's our podcast from the week before.

Of course, everyone has an opinion, and there are lots of good insights here.This will be 30 minutes well-spent if you want a broad, but informed view, and if it sparks some dialog or questions, we're keen to hear from you.

The podcast was moderated by Michael Finneran, and my comments start at the 8:44 mark - here's the link.

UCStrategies Podcast - 2015 Highlights

Everywhere you look there are 2015 reviews and predictions for 2016 - it's what we do. So, better late than never - our last UCStrategies podcast reviewed 2015 and how this bodes for the new year. We did this just before Xmas, but for some reason, it didn't get posted til now.

2016 is barely out of the gate, and our perspectives on the podcast are still very timely, so I urge you to give it a listen. Blair Pleasant was the host, and my comments start at the 9:43 mark.

Just a quick heads-up - we're doing our 2016 UC&C outlook on today's podcast, and I'll be posting about that once it's on the UCStrategies portal.

Cisco and the New Era of Collaboration

That was a big theme at last week's Cisco Collaboration Summit, and I've put my thoughts together around that in my current post for UCStrategies. The lines are blurring between UC and collaboration, and while Cisco only talks about the latter these days, there's a lot of UC in what the latest iteration of Spark can do. If they end up owning the market, those terms will go away and Spark will simply become a verb that encompasses all these applications. I'll bet they'd love for that to happen, but that's another conversation.

For now, I'll steer you to my post on the UCStrategies portal. I'm only touching on three big takeaways here, but there's a lot more we could be talking about from the summit. Perhaps another time, perhaps another place, perhaps on a Spark session!

UC Summit/BC Summit Podcast

Somehow I missed this last week - better late than never. I recently posted my takeaways about the UC Summit, and since then, we did our own post-mortem via our regular UCStrategies podcast.

Lots to digest, not just because it was a really solid conference, but also because we launched our new identity changeover from UC Summit to BC Summit. That process will unfold over time, but it reflects how the nature of UC&C has evolved, and how our focus as analysts and consultants has had to change along with that.

The podcast was ably moderated as usual by Michael Finneran, and you can download it here from our portal.

UC Summit - Three Takeaways - Searching for the Center

I was part of last week's UC Summit, and what really stood out for me was how fragmented this space is becoming. There seem to be several centers of gravity now, and tracking them all is, well, what we try to do at UCStrategies.

For those of you who weren't there, I've written up my thoughts, which are summed up into three basic themes. They all bring me to same conclusion that there may not a true center any more for UC, so you have to stay on top of a few trends to get the big picture.

Am not sure where this is taking us, but there are a lot of companies now vying for your business. However you define the pool of vendors to consider, it's only going to get bigger, and I hope my post helps make that clear. It's running now on the UCStrategies portal, and as always your comments are welcome.

UC Summit - First Take

Wanted to get a quick post out and share some photos from the first full day of the UC Summit. The conference actually started on Sunday, and I spoke on the first session. I also moderated a session yesterday, and so far, the content has been consistently first rate. There's a healthy mix here of consultants, end customers and sponsors, and it's great to have access to all this in a vendor-neutral setting.

Aside from the familiar players - and most all the majors are here - it's great to have so many new ones that you wouldn't normally associate with the UC space, such as Google, Tata, Vonage and newcomer Redbooth.

The UC&C space is undergoing major disruption - and understanding that is the big takeaway overall from this event. To reflect that, we've adapted too, with the new name and logo being launched. Going forward, the UC Summit will now be known as the BC Summit - Business Communications.

I'll have more to say about this in my wrapup post, which will follow once I'm back from the summit. Until then, here are some photos from yesterday.

Jim Burton welcoming the audience, with the new BC Summit logo behind him

Vendor roundtable - well, looks more like a new offensive line formation - great session, but too short for so many people

Dave Michels talking about how disuptive the new messaging-based collaboration platforms are - totally agree

Blair Pleasant and Kevin Kieller talking about usage and adoption challenges for UC

Clark Peterson of Vonage Business explaining why they're in this business and how well they understand the changing needs of end users, especially Millennials

UC Summit - Starts This Sunday

Got a few conferences coming up now, with the next one starting on Sunday. It's the UC Summit, an event I've blogged and written about before. This post is a friendly reminder that we're just a few days away. I fly there Sunday morning, and presuming there are no travel hiccups, I'll be on my first panel at 2pm that afternoon. Slides are all ready, and am looking forward to La Jolla!

As per my last post, here's everything else you need to know about the summit, along with what I'll be speaking about.

As a UC Expert, I'm part of the UCStrategies team that is presenting great content on all things UC&C, and we'll have a solid mix of customers, vendors, consultants/analysts and channels. This year, I'll be speaking on two sessions:

Sunday at 2pm - Contact Center Update

Monday at 5pm - The Changing Role of IT and Shift in Technology Decision-Making

For more detail, here's the summit agenda, along with full details about the conference. We also issued a news briefrecently outlining how this year's summit will be structured.

Also, if you missed last week's podcast, we did a preview of the summit. I was away and couldn't participate, but there's plenty here to get you excited about what's coming.

UC Summit 2015 - November 15-18

Just a quick shout-out for my next conference - the UC Summit, held as usual in La Jolla, CA.

As a UC Expert, I'm part of the UCStrategies team that is presenting great content on all things UC&C, and we'll have a solid mix of customers, vendors, consultants/analysts and channels. This year, I'll be speaking on two sessions, and am working on those presentations now:

Sunday at 2pm - Contact Center Update

Monday at 5pm - The Changing Role of IT and Shift in Technology Decision-Making

For more detail, here's the summit agenda, along with full details about the conference. We also issued a news brief recently outlining how this year's summit will be structured.

Also, if you missed last week's podcast, we did a preview of the summit. I was away and couldn't participate, but there's plenty here to get you excited about what's coming.

Is UC the Best Solution for Collaboration?

This is a valid question.

Lately, I've been looking deeper into the relationship between UC and collaboration, and it's getting rather convoluted. IT decision-makers don't have it easy these days, and collaboration is right up there on the must-have list, with seemingly 10 directions you could be going in.

UC vendors have to adapt, and this presents some interesting challenges, especially for identifying the problem set your collaboration solution is supposed to address. I don't have all the answers, and if anything I hope to raise new questions about what collaboration is supposed to look like today.

That's where I'm going with my current post for UCStrategies. As a UC Expert, I contribute a monthly post to the portal, and I hope you stay for a while to explore our podcasts and other posts from fellow UC Experts.

Before doing that, I hope you read my post first, and would love to hear your thoughts. Sharing is greatly appreciated, and if the UCSummit is on your calendar, I'll be speaking there as well.

Predictions we got Wrong - Latest UCS Podcast

If you think analysts are always right, I'll happily keep that myth going by agreeing with you. Of course, nobody likes admitting being wrong, especially when your reputation is on the line. However, technology is a moving target by nature, and it's always fun to cite famous misses by the likes of Bill Gates.

Our latest UCStrategies podcast was along those lines, and rather than dwell on missed predictions, we talked more about trends we thought would have come to fruition by now. This takes us to topics like social media/business, WebRTC, mobile UC, UCaaS, and the basic concept of UC itself.

Lots of ground to cover, and I hope you give our podcast a listen. My comments come at the 11:18 mark, and the podcast is posted now on the UCS portal. Please share if you like it, and before you know it, we'll have a new podcast for you to hear.