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Congratulations to Telstra, which recently announced integration of their TIPT (Telstra IP Telephony) Hosted PBX service with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS).
Telstra and Microsoft today unveiled Australia’s first hosted IP telephony service integrated with Microsoft Office Communications Server (OCS). This will enable Australian organisations to place high definition Telstra IP Telephony calls directly from applications such as Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft Office Communicator and Microsoft SharePoint.
The new offering of Microsoft OCS on Telstra IP Telephony (TIPT) services means customers can now see at a glance if their contacts are on a phone call, busy or available to be contacted. If available, the user simply clicks on their name to initiate and then manage the telephone call.
Telstra Product Management Executive Director, Mr Philip Jones, said that until now Microsoft OCS integration was limited to customers with premise-based IP telephony services and the new service would improve efficiency by coupling the enhanced features offered by Telstra IP Telephony with certain Microsoft programs.
It’s a great solution. And one of the things that’s overlooked about this, I think, is that from an operations perspective, it’s actually quite simple. Businesses get Unified Communications by blending Telstra’s Hosted PBX solution, which is already live and in market, with Microsoft’s enterprise applications, which are already live and in market.
It’s pretty common to see people talk about UC in either a “forklift” way (‘replace all your stuff with all my stuff, and then you’ll have UC’), or in a “future” way (‘just wait….in Release XYZ you’ll see UC in a whole new way’)….so it’s nice to see Telstra UC-enabling their existing customers (with Microsoft app integration, mobile integration, high-definition voice, and more) today, using the BroadSoft infrastructure already in place.
There’s been a lot of “Hosted v. Premises” debate in the blogosphere in the last few weeks (see here, here, and here), and a particularly spirited debate over at focus.com (“Why wouldn’t a Small to Mid-Size Business Always Go With a Hosted Phone Solution?”), with some fantastic insights from friends-of-BroadSoft Alteva, Broadcore, and SimpleSignal on why their hosted business is booming.
But – sometimes these discussion threads tend to have diminishing returns. You see people digging in their heels on either the ‘pro-hosted’ or ‘pro-premises’ positions.
This kind of black-and-white mindset, I think, misses three interesting trends in our industry.
First, we’re seeing a convergence of hosted and premises solutions in the SIP Trunking space, where service providers complement premises systems with network-hosted applications. Service providers who offer only ‘plain connectivity’ trunking have a serious customer churn risk – with today’s ease of portability, voice-only SIP trunks are quickly becoming a commodity. But service providers that “UC-Enable” their SIP Trunks – CBeyond boasts an average of seven UC apps per customer, and an enviously low churn rate – are able to lock in and monetize their SIP trunking base.
Second, it’s telling that a lot of the historically premises-oriented vendors have been leading the charge into hosted UC. Whether it’s Cisco and Webex Connect, Microsoft’s Hosted Messaging & Collaboration, or Lotus Live – I think the rapid move towards hosted apps from these companies is a clarion call that the hosted UC space is absolutely the real thing.
But at the same time, these teams aren’t abandoning premises solutions either. Microsoft’s “Power of Choice” message has been particularly accurate here, I think. Customers are going to be able to consume apps from enterprise-hosted apps, service-provider hosted apps, or Microsoft-hosted apps – there’s not just one correct answer.
Third, we’re seeing a rise in “virtual overlay services”, where UC apps are provided “in the cloud” independent of the actual end user phones. Google Voice is probably the most famous of these, but certainly service providers around the world have been providing (and monetizing) “Virtual Front Office”-type apps with BroadWorks for years. These apps are demonstrating that there’s a business for hosted UC services that complement, not replace premises systems.
So – “Hosted vs. Premises” doesn’t represent the debate very well, and could actually lead to people missing out on some huge market opportunities.
One of the key trends that’s driving “Unified Communications as a Service” (or ‘Hosted UC’) is that as power and productivity and capability increase, it simply makes more sense to host this functionality “in the cloud.”
Or, to put another way: if all you need is voice, then there’s really not much difference between premises-based solutions or hosted solutions; but once you need a blended service that includes voice, video, mobility, Microsoft or IBM or Google integration, social networking integration, and application integration…well, that’s going to exceed the capabilities of all but the largest of IT organizations.
And these rich UC solutions require rich infrastructure. In the same way that Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” describes a model where fundamental needs must be met before higher value goals can be achieved, Hosted UC has always been dependent on access networks that deliver fundamental levels of bandwidth, security, and control. If you build it, they will come.
As you may have heard, there’s a router war going on right now. Alcatel-Lucent has muscled into the router business, dominated by Cisco and Juniper. Last week they made an announcement about a new 100 gigabit Ethernet edge router, which the company claims will be the first on the market when it is available next year.
Here’s InformationWeek and Telephony coverage of the announcement.
The “edge” is an important distinction. Traditionally the fastest routers have resided in the core of service provider networks, where massive amounts of data are managed. Alcatel Lucent wants to get into the core as well, as explained by Dow Jones:
Over the past five years, Alcatel went from a new entrant to the third-largest player in the $4.5 billion market for edge routers, which manage Internet traffic at the point in the network that’s closest to the user. The business, which falls under its IP division, accounted for 8% of the company’s total revenue in the first quarter.
On Thursday, Alcatel announced a 100 gigabit ethernet edge router, which the company claims is 10 to 100 times faster than anything currently out there. Because of the large capacity, the company hopes the product can breach the more demanding market for core routers, which sit closer to the service provider’s central facility. The market, worth about $2.4 billion, is dominated by Cisco and Juniper but is a potential new source of more profitable revenue.
Call it the race to 100 GbE, call it the router showdown – those stories are easy to write. But they under-report the important trend driving this intense competition – exploding amounts of consumer and enterprise traffic, driven by advanced services and 2.0 applications. This is the underlying issue all these manufacturers, and their carrier customers, are scrambling to prepare for.
At BroadSoft, we don’t have a dog in this router fight. We provide the DNA and applications that are creating a surge in network traffic. Through our partnership with Microsoft, we power unified communications (UC) that unites the desktop with the mobile device for distributed workforces. Moving to an all-IP solution also helps make innovative services like collaboration, video, disaster recovery, and application integration much easier to deploy.
As networks migrate to full IP from traditional TDM, these advanced services will produce the kind of traffic only seen at the core of networks a decade ago. This traffic will require the huge new pipes the big three are introducing, and explains the fight to own a big slice of a multi-billion dollar market.
So here’s to more router competition – as long as it gets the network “on ramps” in place for the data explosion coming down the road.
Michael Tessler
Scott Hoffpauir
Leslie Ferry
Alex Doyle
Curtis Hartmann
Shirish Andhare
Paul Adams
