UC
Avaya and Polycom announced an enhanced partnership to expand joint marketing of their UC products covering voice, video, conferencing, and unified messaging. The last year has been one of tremendous change within the UC market landscape as industry giant Nortel was swallowed up, Cisco expanded its collaboration offerings and announced an intent to acquire Tandberg to enhance its video conferencing portfolio. In addition, Microsoft continues to move forward with OCS 2010 Wave 14 as it positions itself to directly compete in the IP-PBX market. What do all these moves mean for buyers? Better interoperability is always a good thing, but there’s a clear indication that Avaya and Microsoft are positioning themselves to better compete with Cisco, with Polycom standing to benefit as the lone independent desktop-room-telepresence enterprise video conferencing vendor. Customers in mixed environments would be wise to evaluate these moves, understand any potential interoperability challenges, and revisit their assumptions as to which vendor is best suited to provide which piece of the UC puzzle.
