Unified communications the talk of VoiceCon Fall

Announcements from ShoreTel, IBM, Verizon Business, Dialogic, Microsoft

VoIP, unified messaging, products and services

With so many announcements coming out last week from VoiceCon Fall 2007 in San Francisco, today we’ll share just some of the highlights, but we’ll pick up on more details over the next three newsletter editions. Re-capping the news:

* ShoreTel and Black Box announced a strategic alliance in which Black Box will deliver ShoreTel's IP telephony systems. Under the terms of the agreement, Black Box will sell, install and provide support to large enterprise customers. ShoreTel also demonstrated its latest upgrade with the ShoreTel E911 Notification Application that goes beyond standard 911 compliance to provide increased control.

* IBM launched the next phase of its unified communication and collaboration (UC2) strategy by expanding IBM Lotus Sametime software into a product family that will include new telephony integration software. In a related announcement, Siemens said that it had struck a deal with IBM to license elements of Siemens’ OpenScape Technology to IBM, “to enhance the IBM Lotus ‘Unified Telephony’ offering currently planned by IBM as part of the expanded Lotus Sametime product family.” In a separate announcement, IBM said is was acquiring WebDialogs to expand IBM’s conferencing capabilities.

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With so many announcements coming out last week from VoiceCon Fall 2007 in San Francisco, today we’ll share just some of the highlights, but we’ll pick up on more details over the next three newsletter editions. Re-capping the news:

* ShoreTel and Black Box announced a strategic alliance in which Black Box will deliver ShoreTel's IP telephony systems. Under the terms of the agreement, Black Box will sell, install and provide support to large enterprise customers. ShoreTel also demonstrated its latest upgrade with the ShoreTel E911 Notification Application that goes beyond standard 911 compliance to provide increased control.

* IBM launched the next phase of its unified communication and collaboration (UC2) strategy by expanding IBM Lotus Sametime software into a product family that will include new telephony integration software. In a related announcement, Siemens said that it had struck a deal with IBM to license elements of Siemens’ OpenScape Technology to IBM, “to enhance the IBM Lotus ‘Unified Telephony’ offering currently planned by IBM as part of the expanded Lotus Sametime product family.” In a separate announcement, IBM said is was acquiring WebDialogs to expand IBM’s conferencing capabilities.

* Verizon Business rolled out its Integrated Communications Package to provide unified communications to the company’s Hosted IP Centrex customers (part of Verizon Business’ VoIP portfolio) so subscribers can “access voice mail, control incoming and outgoing calls, manage their online presence, send text messages, and synchronize contacts and calendars.”

* Dialogic Corporation announced the “imminent availability” of new media gateways for unified communications designed to connect Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to existing PBX systems and PSTN networks.

* Microsoft announced a host of licensing agreements and partnerships when it outlined its approach to “voice communications using voice codec software, RT Audio Codec, which has been shown to deliver superior sound quality.” The company also announced that Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 will include a “Quality of Experience Monitoring Server, a comprehensive tool to monitor voice and video quality;” and that the planned launch date for its next generation of Unified Communications Software is set for Oct. 16.

Next time, we’ll look at how the Microsoft announcements complicate the competitive environment, then we’ll follow up next week with analysis of how IBM’s strategy further strengthens its position, and wrap up with our observations on how VoIP and unified communications are evolving across the industry.

Read more about voip & convergence in Network World's VoIP & Convergence section.

Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Larry Hettick is a principal analyst at Current Analysis.