Microsoft To VARs: You Need A New Voice
That doesn't mean virtualization and VMware are cooling off, it just means your employees, customers and peers are going to be doing a lot of talking about the opportunities and challenges surrounding unified communications and VoIP in the coming months.
Microsoft is trying to be a modern-day Ma Bell, if you will, in bringing some sanity to the problems we all face in managing our PBX-based voice-mail systems, messages left on our mobile phones and Blackberries along with e-mail and access to electronic calendars. In essence, Microsoft wants to put an end to all those wasted minutes per week (37, according to Microsoft exec Jeff Raikes) spent playing phone tag and in voice-mail jail.
Here's how Bill Gates views it: "... but now is the first time we've got a solid product line, so it's an opportunity to bring telephony into this world so that you only have one directory." Of course, the clincher is: "They can drop the PBX altogether and just have software running on the Windows server." The "they" Gates is referring to are the customers VARs sell to.
So by now you have read that Microsoft ushered in a host of products that includes its Office Communications Server, client software to handle phone, instant messaging and video communications. It all sounds too good to be true. Watching the product launch live online, I saw an ebullient Raikes and Gates touting their company's technical achievement along with a long list of partnerships.
One of the demos did not perform flawlessly, but was impressive enough in the controlled setting of the product launch to get the point across to those gathered, watching and reporting on the event. I was left with two impressions. The first was most people will underestimate what it took for Microsoft to pull this off. The second was that this is the next killer app.
Microsoft clearly has an opportunity to leverage the channel to deliver on its vision for unified communications. Microsoft needs a clear channel strategy for its voice products for all of its partners. Even more important, it needs Raikes -- or someone at his level -- to serve as the channel evangelist for unified communications.
After all, Gates believes one of the company's biggest challenges in this market is channel capacity. So Microsoft has to bring partners into the voice space for the first time or increase the participation of those who have already staked out this space. So what's a solution provider to do? Well, here is Gates' advice: "They [VARs] should assess how they can get customers to think about the productivity benefits or the cost-savings here. This change allows both. ... The reason things are exploding now is that there's this phenomenon that when some customers start to do it and talk to other customers, then the willingness just jumps up dramatically."
Are you ready and willing? Comment below or let me know at [email protected].