Aims for dominance in enterprise Unified Communications?
I wonder how many other markets Microsoft will launch PowerPoints into?
Earlier this week, Microsoft made a big announcement of their plan to enter the enterprise IP telephony market. They are really in an interesting position. Dominant player in personal productivity applications (you know, word processing, spreadsheets and presentation software) and PC operating systems puts them at the forefront of the evolving endpoint space. My friend at Gartner said that enterprises will buy one more phone, and after that it'll be softphones and mobile devices.
Oh, and Microsoft is building a presence in mobile devices with their Win Mobile 5.0. They have devices coming from Motorola, Palm, HP and HTC. Which will give Nokia and Symbian a run for their money.
I agree that the problem is that Microsoft will take a year to deliver product, and two years to deliver the same that others can do now. The company has been seduced into 'overhangitis,' a serious but potentially fatal tendency. I believe that customers will not be able to purchase products in the domain for at least a year, and products with competitive features won't be available for two.
Is there any compelling reason that both the Microsoft and Cisco offers are called 'Unified Communications?'
