Microsoft’s Don Dodge has a good post about Microsoft’s Unified Communications Plans, including some NYT quotes and a link to the product road map press release (here). On the press release page are some other good links to resources.
Why you should care.
Let’s assume you can’t stand Microsoft, Redmond, Windows, etc, etc. That’s fine but if you are thinking about this space, you still should pay attention to what these folks are saying for these reasons.
1. They are doing the heavy lifting when it comes to user education. Having you voice mails in your email in box or having your email read via your voice mail, etc, does have lots of advantages and possibilities for improvements in productivity as well as opportunities for new businesses. With Microsoft throwing the PR/Marketing machine at this, lots of people who don’t know VoIP from Chicken Salad, will starting understanding what all this stuff is about.
2. Desktops, Desktops, Desktops. MS shipping better client code and apps that allow this stuff to work better helps. Today, I think Windows Live Messenger does not offer a better experience then Skype when it comes to voice or video. Sorry, Robert (oh wait, he is alumni now!) but it just doesn’t. However, lots of people who try Windows Live Messenger and don’t like the experience, head to Skype or some other option. Happens all the time. Somebody says “If you like that, you’ll love Skype.” How that applies to you? Simple. Microsoft will deploy code which will educate people and millions of desktops will have plumbing and an opportunity for you to ship something better.
3. An unblemished record for shipping DIY kits. Sharepoint, Live Communications Server, etc, etc, all are not out of the box solutions, they require partners, integrators, and solution providers to make this stuff actually do something. The closest MS have ever come to an out of the box “install.exe” type solution was Small Business Server which attempted to pull a bunch of this stuff together to allow for a somewhat install it and go solution. Not a top of the sales chart winner which is too bad because it is a really good product. How this applies to you? Eco-system opportunities galore. Assuming MSFT does what they say and starts hawking this, the world will need integrators and others to make it work.
4. Holes, Verticals, and add ons. Never once have I seen an enterprise solution come out of Microsoft that was perfect, no other features required, one size fits all, nothing else to add. While some say there may be zero opportunities for VC level businesses come out of this, there are tons of opportunities for snappy developers to grab an MSDN kit and start coding away.
Love em or Hate em, those crazy kids in Redmond are helping to crank up the noise on Unified Communications which means opportunities for you.
1. Microsoft is not doing "the heavy lifting" when it comes to user education. Something simple to sign up and use like GoogleTalk or Skype might be, but Microsoft takes the user through a tad too much "sign-up" experience to be seen as the avatar of heavy lifting.
2. If you believe that Microsoft is shipping better client code, please install Windows Vista Beta 2 on a PC and rethink that statement.
3. I make my living mostly doing SharePoint consulting and while my now infamous "5 Things Wrong With SharePoint" article is over a year old, it is still valid as to the failure to deliver by various Microsoft product teams. I am almost called in to install and customize SharePoint, BizTalk, etc. because the IT department is scared of what might happen just using the product out of the box.
4. An enterprise solution out of Microsoft? Please push the bong pipe away before blogging! Maybe their purchase of Navision which gave Microsoft the Axapta product was an enterprise solution, but I cannot honestly say that enterprise solution exist in other Microsoft product lines. The weakness of Microsoft in that arena is that many of their employees have no experience in the enterprise outside of the womb of the Microsoft mothership.
Posted by: Mike Drips | June 28, 2006 at 09:16