The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad [...]]]>

Polycom (www.polycom.com) and Microsoft (www.microsoft.com) have declared their love, er a “global strategic agreement” for developing and marketing “integrated,” standards-based unified communications (UC) solutions.

The agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s “key strategic global alliance” for UC; both sides will invest in product development, sales, and marketing.

Polycom will develop a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14” and beyond, including lots of new Polycom CX series endpoints featuring HD voice and video, new room-based video systems designed for direct integration with MCS “14” and additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions.

The biggest hoot out of this announcement is seeing a quote from Microsoft Corporate VP Gurdeep Singh Pall, the go-to guy when it comes to Microsoft’s telephony products. Two years ago at VoiceCon Orlando, he poo-poo’ed the traditional desktop handset, waiving around a cheap $300 netbook and saying one didn’t need all that dedicated hardware.

Today, Pall is singing the praises of one of the biggest phone guys in the business. “Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a roadmap that will deliver interoperable UC solutions with choice and innovation in video conferencing and customer devices that will help transform enterprise communication,” Pall said in a press release.

It’s a VERY different tune from “We don’t need no stinkin’ desktop phones.” Now Microsoft is the new BFF with the best desktop phone and videoconferencing company. Guess they figured out they can’t do everything standalone, especially when it comes to telepresence. Either that or the Acer netbook died…

The trial is expected to enable participants to see how cloud-based UC&C (unified communication and collaboration) capabilities can be used quicly and cost-effectively across an enterprise.

Participants include  “a multinational auto manufacturer, a woman’s [...]]]>

Verizon Business (www.verizonbusiness.com) will run field trials of Cisco’s new Hosted Collaboration Solution for the next two months.

The trial is expected to enable participants to see how cloud-based UC&C (unified communication and collaboration) capabilities can be used quicly and cost-effectively across an enterprise.

Participants include  “a multinational auto manufacturer, a woman’s fashion retailer and a state government agency” and will use Verizon Business solutions built on Cisco UC&C capabilities on/in a cloud infrastructure.

Other companies signing up for the effort include Acme Packet, Aspect, AudioCodes, Broadcom, BroadSoft, Brocade, [...]]]>

HP, Juniper Networks, Microsoft, Logitech/LifeSize and Polycom have formed the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF). The organization (www.ucif.org) “seeks to unify” the fragmented UC ecosystem by enabling standards-based inter-vendor UC communications interoperability – i.e. what enterprise customers really want.

Other companies signing up for the effort include Acme Packet, Aspect, AudioCodes, Broadcom, BroadSoft, Brocade, ClearOne, Jabra, Plantronics, RADVISION, Siemens Enterprise Communications, and Teliris.

Hmm, doesn’t seem like Cisco has shown up yet….

UCIF says it is the first and only entity working across all UC “modalities” to deliver interoperability based on existing standards. UCIF-certified products are being touted to help reduce implementation risk and complexity, thereby helping to grow the worldwide market.

The organization will identify common customer usage scenarios and throw, er leverage existing industry standards to resolve interop issues. UCIF will also develop verifiable interoperability testing and certification of UC products.

Interesting, the forum is placing its initial focus on video and telepresence solutions. “Guided by customer feedback” (i.e. people have complained loudly), the forum will place specific emphasis on signaling planes, video codecs and protocols, endpoint configurations, and firewall traversal technologies, thereby facilitating broader video adoption and communication across multiple organizations and between platforms.

More seriously, you have a traditional telecommunications hardware firm jumping into the fuzzy world of software solutions as a complement to the next step up the IP PBX food chain — more applications.  Once you add VoIP and PBX functionality, the [...]]]>

ADTRAN (www.adtran.com) entered the unified communications (UC) market last month.  Whatsup with that?

More seriously, you have a traditional telecommunications hardware firm jumping into the fuzzy world of software solutions as a complement to the next step up the IP PBX food chain — more applications.  Once you add VoIP and PBX functionality, the next thing many businesses want/desire is additional functionality to tie together all the pieces in the data food chain – voice, email, web, fax.   And there’s also the win-win for system integrators/VARs to be able to add/offer UC to their customers as Yet-Another value-add.

However, it’s SOFTWARE, so the company will now have to deal with things like providing updates and more features and making sure the resellers offering UC are capable of offering customization skills that end-user clients desire.

From a size standpoint, ADTRAN’s UC solution can go up to 2,000 users — a bit bigger than the average 500-person ceiling in the more typical SMB definition, and opening up larger distributed enterprises.

Features for the UC solution include voice mail, unified messaging, fax server, auto attendant, graphical drag-and-drop for service creation (no programming), response (IVR) for inbound and outbound calling services, integration with databases, text to speech, call redirection services and more.

I think ADTRAN’s approach may have a lot of uptake because it’s relatively simple and straight-forward as compared to the mind-inducing headaches of complexity you see from larger name brands who start talking in code about customer-enabled business processes (yes, ADTRAN also mutters those buzz words) and defining as UC as every color of the rainbow except black and white.

The company’s real challenge is — as ADTRAN executives freely ‘fessed up — is figuring out how selling a software-based product works in its relationships with its resellers and with the company’s culture.  Software and adding value to software (i.e. programming/customization by third-party) is a new ballpark.

Last week, I and about 26 other analysts and media were in Huntsville, Alabama as guests of ADTRAN.  The company was making its introductory launch of a unified communications (UC) software [...]]]>

WARNING: Some of the pictures below are pretty big and might freak out your browser and/or cause slow load times for this page.

Last week, I and about 26 other analysts and media were in Huntsville, Alabama as guests of ADTRAN.  The company was making its introductory launch of a unified communications (UC) software solution — a big step off the company’s traditional path of making telecommunications equipment such as switches, routers, and multi-service access solutions…more about that later.

Southern hospitality is the rule in Huntsville, so there’s a welcoming bag in the hotel room.

Inside the bag are samples of the area’s cultural touchstones–

Gotta love folks who provides you with Jack and coke upon check in, along with a Moon Pie, freeze-dried ice cream, and one of those Cracker Barrel triangle/golf tee games.

Our “home” for the next two days was ADTRAN’s Mark C. Smith Conference Center.  People may recall that Smith also has a conference room named after him over at Digium.

Smith, the founder of ADTRAN, is still revered at the company and the values he established for running and operating the business are still in strong force.

ADTRAN has a total of three high-rise buildings around a “lake” in the office park.

The picture above is taken from a window of the conference center.  Inside those buildings are a bunch of testing labs, one of two assembly lines for products, and a secure storage area to put products before they are shipped out.

This is the third building, and the one where the conference center is. It also has a manufacturing line and a whole bunch of testing labs.

ADTRAN CEO Tom Stanton welcoming the goonies, er media to the Unify press event.

Why Unify? ADTRAN is layering unified communications upon its product offerings, moving up the food chain from infrastructure to IP PBXes to apps.  Company execs admit they aren’t sure how the introduction of a software product is going to affect their channel partner relationships – a startling honest statement from the traditional “everything has its place” engineering culture.

The demo is strangely familiar, highlighting how a real estate agent can use unified communications to integrate the web, voice, fax, email, but presentation makes it look [...]]]>

I’m in Huntsville watching a demo of NetVanta Unified Communication.  Around me are about 27 press and analysts, including a number of UC foodies, er UC consultants.

The demo is strangely familiar, highlighting how a real estate agent can use unified communications to integrate the web, voice, fax, email, but presentation makes it look a lot easier than the first time.

We’ve seen four videos all ending with “Unified” morphs into “Younified” ; they all e highlights unified messaging with “Find Me, follow me,” the ability to manage from multiple mobile devices, click-to-dial and so forth.

Next up is/are carrier announcements.

Back in 2006, Nortel and Microsoft rolled [...]]]>

Nortel’s asset fire sale “could possibly gut” its 3 year UC partnership with Microsoft, Network World says. Uh, yah think?   Given that HP and Microsoft swore to be friends and jointly invest up to $180 million at InterOp last month, I’d say both companies are in splitsville.

Back in 2006, Nortel and Microsoft rolled out a four year plan called the Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA), designed to jointly develop and sell UC and VoIP technology to enterprise customers.  Nortel brought the phone knowledge, some middleware, and its installed base while Microsoft brought Office Communications Server (OCS) and its brand name.

Sale of Nortel’s various assets and divisions could leave the ICA partnership without Nortel’s IP PBX platform, engineers working with Nortel on joint products, and – probably the biggest loss – Nortel Global Services, the consulting arm for ICA.

Nortel CEO Mike Zafirovski predicted the partnership would generate $1 billion in revenue, but by 2008 Nortel was reporting a $3.4 million loss on the effort.

Avaya may pick up Nortel’s UC business for $500 million, one of Canada’s papers is reporting. If this takes place, Avaya would overlap with its UC own products AND Microsoft has a UC partnership with Avaya, leaving everyone guessing as to what redundancies would be chopped.

If Nortel Global Services goes out the door in the next wave of asset divestment, so does support for Microsoft’s UC try-it program for customers.

(Of course, this doeth beg the question why Microsoft isn’t putting down some cash to pick up some assets on the cheap, but it might be too busy with Bing to care…)

Besides, Microsoft and HP are already cozy with their own four year (hmm, where’d that come from?) “strategic global initiative” to deliver an end-to-end UC and collaboration solution, with the two companies earmarking up to $180 million in “product development, professional services, as well as joint sales and marketing, to help organizations lower costs and improve productivity.”

Further down the HP press release, there’s a lot of nice bullet points about how HP will have a dedicated team of service professionals (like they had with Nortel), as well as work with communication service providers for hosting solutions for SMBs (Like they did with Nortel).

Most of the GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles) net loss is wrapped up in $4.1 million for legal settlement costs with Mitel over a patent fight; the two companies agreed [...]]]>

ShoreTel this week reported its financial results, bringing in $31.2 million and reporting a GAAP net loss of $7 million, around $0.16 per share.

Most of the GAAP (General Accepted Accounting Principles) net loss is wrapped up in $4.1 million for legal settlement costs with Mitel over a patent fight; the two companies agreed to play nice and cross-licensed the technology in question. There’s also $1.8 million in stock-based compensation expenses and $0.5 milling in restructuring charges.  If you knock out the various one-time charges, non-GAAP net loss for the quarter was $0.8 million as compared to $0.3 million in non-GAAP net income this time last year.

Investors shouldn’t fret, since the company closed out the quarter with over $108 million in cash and equivalents. It’s also racked up a bunch of high-profile customer wins in the UC space with professional sports organizations including the Verizon Center (Rock the Red!!!!) with a 1,500 user deployment, the San Francisco Giants and AT&T Park, and the Frisco Rough Riders, a double-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers.  And according to the all the folks who went to VoiceCon – vendors voting on products – ShoreTel’s product got the Best of Show, the third straight win (Hat trick, Rock the Red!!!) for the company at VoiceCon.

Next quarter (i.e. from now to the end of June 30, 2009), ShoreTel expects to bring in revenue between $29 million to $34 million, with GAAP operating expenses to be between $20.5 million to $21.5 million, including $1.5 million in stock-based comp expenses.