Innovative Communications Alliance

January 17, 2007

I am in New York today with Greg Galitzine on my way to the Innovative Communications Alliance meeting which is the new (since this past summer anyway) initiative between Microsoft and Nortel. I haven’t covered this topic too extensively and I am interested to see what the duo from Redmond and Canada can and will do for unified communications in the enterprise and beyond.

Moreover I am interested to learn how this alliance might either include or exclude other communications vendors. Questions floating around my head? Can it be truly innovative if it includes only 2 vendors? I suppose it can as these are some very large companies with massive R&D budgets. But is there room for smaller companies to also add their innovative "widgets" as needed.

Also, what is the response from companies like Avaya, Cisco and others? How will they go forward if Microsoft is too closely allied with Nortel? Obviously other vendors can and will have LCS integration as well but will they be at a disadvantage?

So the question becomes what applications or frameworks will be announced today? I suppose we will hear about both. But I am just thinking out loud -- well in this case in words. I am sure the news will be everywhere in an hour or so stay tuned.

PS: Somewhere there is a video blog from me that will hopefully get posted by the time you read this. I am not sure where it went as it was sent from e-mail.