The UM landscape

CRN | VoIP, Telecommunications, Collaboration | Microsoft To Take On Cisco In Unified Communications.

This is going to be an interesting landscape over the next few years. I’m not as up to speed as Mark and no doubt he will comment when back from holiday this week but I do agree with one statement in here from a Microsoft partner in Ohio

“People are sick and tired of having to go four or five places for voice mail, e-mail, text,” said Kerry Mann, president of Mantralogix, a Microsoft systems integration partner in Mississauga, Ontario. “We are looking forward to this with bated breath, although, of course, we need to see proof of concept. The proof is in the execution.”

Check. Count me in on that one. If you have seen any of the demo of Exchange Server 2007 you will know that some of this pain is starting to be tackled – finally. I have to confess to using my comms tools in this order – IM, email, face to face, phone. When people leave me voice mail it doesn’t always get answered within a day. It’s not that I don’t care, I just prioritise the other channels. With Exchange 2007 that will get better as voice mail arrives in my inbox and I can control my inbox with voice from my phone.