By Jeff Hicks
I recently attended VoiceCon and noticed a few trends there – who knows how they’ll pan out, but here are some notes from the event.
First, Video conferencing had a very large presence at the event. Many companies are either selling or deploying solutions to save on travel and enable collaboration. Management for these solutions is in it’s infancy, but it’s clear that it will be needed, because right now, the stop-gap solution seems to be throwing bandwidth at it. Desktop video is going to cause major network issues as it rolls out, just as VoIP caused major issues before it.
Second, there were several Voice Management sessions. It’s pretty clear that there’s no longer a question about the need to manage networked communications. Many companies are taking a proactive approach with planning and management ahead of the deployment, and the need for Quality of Experience and network performance management, combined, is seen as necessary for true Unified Communications management. In fact, several sessions focused on UC management – those sessions had very good attendance and interest.
Finally, I found the Microsoft keynote really interesting. Microsoft compared the desktop phone to the “Brother Word Processor” devices, and doomed to the same fate. Microsoft proposed to the audience that eventually they will have to make a choice between spending $300 on a single function desktop phone on $300 on a multifunctional computer which runs a soft-phone communicator application. Microsoft’s argument is that desktop phones are archaic and outdated.
A fair point, but the one thing about multi-function computers is that one bad program can bring down the whole bunch. Considering how important the phone is to business, it may be that people are willing to pay a price premium for the reliability that comes with a single-function device. Or not. Who knows?
Jeff Hicks is principal technical staff, working primarily in Unified Communications, at NetQoS.
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