Over on the Burton Group Collaboration and Content Strategies blog Mike Gotta posted a comprehensive overview of Microsoft’s UC Launch. Very good read and much more detail on Mike’s ‘regular’ blog (highlighted in his post)
… Microsoft officially launched its UC platform last week in San Francisco at the Bill Graham Auditorium. A webcast of the keynote is available here. Please note that if you scroll down, there are also links to case studies as well as the launch presentations and demos. I attended the event and posted a series of entries on my Collaborative Thinking blog.
- Microsoft UC Launch Event: Getting Ready
- Microsoft Launch Event: Bill Gates Keynote
- Microsoft UC Launch: Jeff Raikes & Bill Gates
- Microsoft UC Launch: VoIP Quality of Experience
- Microsoft UC Launch: Anywhere Access
- Microsoft UC Launch: Embedding UC In LOB Applications …
…
… I expect most organizations to take a pragmatic, long-term view on Microsoft’s UC platform. Decision makers will examine all of the components: Exchange, OCS, Exchange Unified Messaging, Round Table, Live Meeting and so on. For those organizations looking to move from LCS or to take their first step, the catch-phrase “get current & get stable” comes to mind. That means deploying OCS as a IM and presence platform to the point where you have stabilized operational and change management procedures. After that – the conservative move would be to turn-on web conferencing. This could also include hooking OCS up to room environments using Round Table. The more aggressive path would being to deploy VoIP/IP Telephony integration with existing PBX systems and opening up the UC platform to external parties. In any case, the intelligent (and obvious) strategy is to avoid the “big bang” approach. On top of the technology complexity, issues related to organizational readiness and governance will also slow down rapid deployment in large enterprise environments. …
Source: Reviewing Microsoft’s UC Launch Event
Author: Mike Gotta
Date Published: Mon, 22 Oct 2007
Impressive OCS launch and overall largely positive reviews all around. One of the critical success factors however for how well Microsoft will be able to establish OCS globally will be the availability of OCS devices, in particular the RoundTable.
Microsoft has failed thus far to certify the devices widely so as a result you only get it in just 10 countries at this stage (US, CA, UK, FR, DE, IT, NL, ES, JP, AU) … so for anyone outside of these countries, such as Hong Kong, looking to get one there’s no published roadmap nor timeline even. This will also mean that companies with international presence that like to use the RoundTable devices can forget about using RoundTable for all subsidiary locations, unless they order them through any of the above 10 countries and then ship them to other countries not on the list. But that likely violates the license agreement (since they are not certified) and you won’t have warranty support in other countries.
This significantly weakens the OCS value in my view since LiveMeeting without RoundTable is not much more than what you get with WebEx for a long time and desktop video conferencing, IM and presence can be had with Skype Business for much lower investments.
So, Microsoft, when will this be made available in other countries?
Andre,
The OCS Launch (the solutions launched) is impressive compared to the competition. This is that status and achievements of a roadmap / solutions directrion of only 4 years to date.
Furthermore the success is not dependend on Roundtable nor on a feature to feature comparison against Webex.
Roundtable and other UC devices launched are examples of formfactors that can be build as commodity devices (not $500+ IP phones like Cisco). These formfactors are now adopted by a partner eco system.
I do see your point of getting devices certified in other countries but this is more related to local rules that Microsoft’s willingness. I assume this involves local rules and regulations per region / country it may not be as straight formward forward planning wise, but rest assured that Microsoft is pushing to get this certified globally …