UC
At March’s VoiceCon event Siemens introduced OpenScape 2010, the latest iteration of its unified communications platform. One of the highlights of this release is its partnership with VMware to enable OpenScape 2010 to run on VMware’s virtualization platform. This announcement represents additional momentum behind integration of UC and virtualization that I wrote about a few weeks ago (http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/58804). Participants in our research are quickly adopting virtualization in their data centers to reduce operating and capital costs, but most UC vendors still do not support virtualization for their call control servers (Mitel and Siemens being the exception). Microsoft does not yet support virtualization for rich media in its Office Communications Platform, but development work continues (see: http://blogs.technet.com/ucexperts/archive/2009/10/08/ocs-and-virtualization.aspx). Avaya currently supports virtualization within Aura Systems Platform, but does not yet support running call control on general-purpose hypervisors. With Siemens & VMware leading the way, expect to see additional pressure on Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Cisco, and other IP telephony vendors to port their call control services to hypervisor environments, meaning the end of IP telephony server “bunny farms” is getting closer.
