Mike Gotta: Reviewing Microsoft’s UC Launch Event

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.

… 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