Gartner's high opinion of Microsoft OCS creates stir

It can come as no surprise that Gartner's praise of Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 has caused a stir. Gartner placed OCS in the "Visionaries" quadrant of its "Corporate Telephony" report. Digium, maker of the software-only open-source Asterisk platform, joined Microsoft in the same quadrant while the more traditional hardware players, Nortel and Siemens, were placed in the Leaders quandrant. The implication is that telephony without hardware is what is being called out as visionary. OCS is only one example. (OCS reportedly did not score especially high when it came to Microsoft's ability to execute on the vision.) But readers of blogs throughout the blogosphere seem upset that OCS could achieve any kind of visionary standing. Some say the product is lacking basic telephony features.

Analyst Brian Rigg begs to differ. He writes in CMP's No Jitter blog:

Last time I checked the Office Communications Server documentation, basic core telephony were in no way lacking from the software. Though typically deployed as an adjunct to a PBX, OCS can just as easily be set up as a standalone voice platform. In such a scenario, OCS provides call control, allowing users to make and receive calls without connecting to a PBX. Users can also put calls on hold, forward them, and set up audio conferences. Phones – of both the deskset and soft phone variety – are connected directly to OCS. There’s some basic IVR-like capabilities courtesy of Speech Server. DTMF tones can be generated. ...

Now here's the irony. Even those defending OCS agree that it offers a pretty thin set of telephony features when compared to just about any other stand-alone PBX option out there. Yet, pundits are saying it is this very lack of features that will make OCS a disruptive technology. OCS resellers claim that the product isn't a PBX replacement but intended to be a supplement -- one that will add telephony/presence features to the everyday business applications most corporations already use. The argument is that it will first worm its way into the enterprise as an add-on technology and then grow in support of more traditional features later, silently clobbering today's leaders out of their quadrant at that time.

Writes UC VAR Marty Parker in the No Jitter blog:

In fact, most of the 200 OCS 2007 case studies on the Microsoft website show some version of applying communications in new ways, rather than as a replacement for a PBX or IP PBX.

Do these pundits have a point that OCS will create new forms of telephony-enabled business apps? Or have they drank too much of the Microsoft kool-aid? Time will tell.

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