I haven't shared my thoughts with people via this blog for quite a while. In the past six months, I attended three different conferences about Unified Communications (UC). Probably, this is a very hot topic nowadys. Many IT and Telecommunications companies are very excited about UC. Why? Because of new technologies or new business opportunities.
Software Enterprises - Microsoft and IBM
Networking and Telecommunications technology company - Avaya, Cisco and Nortel
Telecommunications Operators - British Telecommunications
Conference Technology companies - Polycom
Technology Research Companies - IDC and Gartner
I have studied their UC products and services to a certain extent. Basically, they are somewhat offering very similar things to the users. Microsoft is focusing on the desktop developments while Cisco is more on the hardware developments (e.g. phone set). Avaya claims that backend technologies are her primary concern. Anyway, this is a very competitive game, one will win and the other will lose. Telecommunications will soon be unified with networking. In other words, telecommunications will be part of your network and run on your network. The traditional phone systems such as PSTN, PBX and ISDN will be phasing out in the future.
My job is to study the available IPT solutions and recommend the good one to the top management.
