UC and virtualization at this point aren’t a marriage made in heaven, at least not yet. Less than 5% of organizations are integrating their UC efforts with desktop virtualization. And for those that are, the reality that most desktop UC clients won’t support voice and video in a desktop virtualization environment means that plans are stalled. On the back-end, vendor support for running IP-PBX software on virtualized servers is rare as most vendors continue to deliver custom appliances based on Linux or Microsoft Windows Server.
Nemertes thinks trends are starting to change, especially as interest in desktop and server virtualization grows as a means of reducing costs and simplifying data center and desktop support. But, in most organizations there is still a disconnect between UC and virtualization planning. Therefore, IT leaders ought to take steps to integrate UC and virtualization plans, at the very least making sure that there is coordination between planned desktop capabilities such as softphones and desktop video, and platforms for desktop operating systems.
