If you're looking for an incredibly insightful, coherent, and witty take on the future model for enterprise communications (and who isn't?), then you've got to read Tom Nolle's latest post.
I really can't sum it up and do it justice--but Tom approaches the evolving model by suggesting that communications has to help us answer the question: "What's that?" In the process of expanding on this question, and how it might get answered by employees of the future, Tom offers a very helpful read on the role that communications might play in the larger enterprise technology world of the future. To me, this is the key passage:
"For UC/UCC, the 'composability' of communications functions, via API or workflow engine, may be more important than the features of a GUI or the 'unification' model itself. But most of all, it means that UC/UCC is driven by work activity; it's not the driver."
That's why I think that recent discussions about communications "platforms" aren't just academic. And we saw another example of a possible platform-oriented vision when Cisco announced its DevNet program aimed at creating a single developer community for the company's full range of infrastructure products, from UC to Internet of Things to Software Defined Networks.
Cisco's track record with developer programs is less than stellar, but if they can pull it off, the vision makes a lot of sense: Open up hooks into the infrastructure (including the communications piece) so that developers can leverage any or all parts of it to build applications that take advantage of whatever capabilities the infrastructure can provide. If that Cisco vision turns out to be valid, we may find that communications as a piece of the infrastructure is even more valuable than communications as an application on the network. Maybe WebRTC "wins" and the applications layer of communications truly is commoditized.
Though if that vision doesn't pan out, it might turn out to be because communications works better as an application platform on the network. In that case, the big winner is Microsoft.
It's no coincidence that these are the two vendors that Tom Nolle singles out as the likeliest beneficiaries of the trend he's describing. And he suggests that it spells trouble for, as he puts it, "the Avayas of the world."
"It's hard to develop a big, sticky, UC strategy when you're the tail 'way behind the dog," Tom writes. "It's all the harder when the dog is still in its nascent stage. Imagine a UC/UCC salesperson trying to sell the Internet of Things, big data, mobility, and maybe the ability to send real-time queries to public safety databases or online ticket sales points."
These companies--your Mitels, Unifys, ShoreTels, etc.--undoubtedly have a tougher row to hoe, on a lot of levels, in a world where Microsoft and Cisco and their respective visions dominate. But I'm not at all convinced that they can't adapt and find a market for products that leverage their communications expertise while looking nothing like the PBXs that these companies built in their original incarnations.
If it's all about "composability," then there's opportunity for these companies--as well as new competitors that haven't even been founded yet--to craft a niche for themselves in a world where communications is a critical component of enterprise services. And in the enterprise technology world, a "niche" can be pretty big.
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