Unified Messaging: The solution Microsoft sows trouble at Cisco and IBM

With its offer unified communications combining instant messaging, e-mail and IP telephony, Microsoft has positioned itself facing Cisco, but also IBM and its solutions collaborative workspace. Reactions gathered at the salon IP Convergence Expo.

The launch of the unified communications solution Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, concerned the telecom world. A palpable anxiety which was browsing through the booths of the exhibition IP Convergence Expo, held from 3 to 5 October in Paris. Especially as the editor of Redmond chose to present his solution to visitors to a booth featuring a hundred PCs. It is France Telecom, the first integrator in France, which will distribute the solution of the firm to a network of 300 integrators certified on the range Exchange. A strike force of 8000 distributors.

A new concept of "partner-competitor '

At Cisco, Microsoft partner for nine years but also a promoter of unified messaging, the official position refers to the press conference held last August by Steve Balmer and John Chambers. "Four ideas emerged: the customers do not want open competition. We must therefore try to be interoperable, to the extent possible we respect the standards, but in some respects we are competitors, "says Pierre Ardichvilli, head of market development at Cisco. Translation: we must now speak of "partners"-competitors, business partners on some issues and on other competitors.

IBM and its Lotus installed bases are also in the spotlight. At Big Blue, one speaks of "collaborating" unified, but the ambition is the same. "We are on the market two years," says Pierre Fleichmann, marketing manager, one of the only ones who dare to challenge Microsoft at a round table. IBM set sametime 7.5, its new platform Lotus open source in order to provide service to competitors Office Communications Server 2007.

Customers lucid

As for the customers, the move by Microsoft is seen as a threat to telecom players. "They make the detection of the presence and will be tomorrow, collaborative, electronic document management (EDMS) and all the functions needed on a workstation, whether from computers or telecommunications," says Antoine Plantier department "telecom networks and security" of Renault. And added: "The day Microsoft will be able to do everything, or almost in terms of telecom services, and where Google will be present on the sector through its forms in ASP, that will happen to existing telecom specialists? "

One issue that will inevitably be raised at the next world exhibition GSM Congress in Barcelona (11-14 February 2008). Microsoft will announce a new incursion, this time on mobility.