Well at last it’s finally here. The Quickening!
Ok, Ok.. now I sound like Tom with his Braveheart quotes. For those who recognize it, I was referring to the original Highlander movie…
No. What I’m really getting at is that today is the official launch of Microsoft’s OCS 2007 unified communications solution.
Much has already been written about this impending launch over the past year or so, so perhaps there will not be any real news in today’s news. However, I imagine that valuable information regarding customers, partners and the like, will indeed make the headlines today.
I’m also waiting for Tom Keating’s take on the solution. His review of OCS 2007 is set to be published later today
TMC president Rich Tehrani is actually fortunate enough to be at the launch event in san Francisco, so I can’t wait to hear his up close and personal take on the day’s events.
And of course, the TMC team will be covering all the different angles of the story as well.
I’m at the BroadSoft event in Phoenix through tomorrow, and I’ve been getting some interesting feedback (too bad most is off the record) from attendees regarding the launch. As I mentioned in yesterday’s entry, it appears there are two camps forming: the “wait and see” group and the “Microsoft’s entry into the market means a rising tide, which is good for all boats.”
I was drawn to a comment I read in old friend Dave Greenfield’s blog regarding the opportunity for Microsoft and how the software giant might fare against their would be competitors:
“As long as communications means UC and UC involves the desktop, organizations will favor Microsoft.”
And that’s a key way to view today’s news; through the eyes of the enterprise buyer. The success or failure of Microsoft’s foray into communications rests in the hands of the enterprise decision makers who choose what applications will run on their enterprise networks.
In any event, stay tuned. Today will be a busy day!
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?
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.
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.