OCS
At last week’s VoiceCon Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) took the wraps off of OCS 14, the next generation of its unified communications providing voice, video, web conferencing, instant messaging and presence aggregation scheduled to ship later in 2010. Microsoft’s announcement was coupled with a number of partner announcements including new phones, branch gateways, and support services. While Microsoft, through its partners, is broadening its support for stand-alone IP phones, it continues to focus its efforts on desktop-based UC accessed via Microsoft Office Communicator client, arguing that software solutions reduce costs and better suit the needs of the virtual worker. Seventy percent of companies have deployed softphones, but only 35% of deployments are to replace desktop phones. IT architects should evaluate OCS 14 as part of your on-going UC planning, look at opportunities to deploy software-only solutions to reduce costs, and make sure that you coordinate desktop software plans with other efforts around desktop virtualization.
