Hyperbole Reigns As Unified Communications Battle Heats Up

During the last few years, Microsoft and HP have been working to enable an additional joint set of partners with UC expertise, offering them marketing development and technology-specific support. Jay Lendl, Microsoft practice director with Minneapolis-based Analysts International Corporation, sees this as an example of strategic planning against Cisco.

"Cisco offers a complete end-to-end unified communications offering, while HP needs to partner with Microsoft to achieve this. Therefore, HP needs Microsoft to be able to compete against Cisco -- they can't be as pervasive otherwise," said Lendl.

Solution providers with backgrounds in telephony integration and data convergence are best equipped to capitalize on the coming wave of unified communications demand. But for VARs to succeed, they're going to have to invest in training the right people in their organizations, or bring in voice application and protocol experience from outside.

Lendl sees Cisco's intimations of HP and Microsoft going direct with UC as a sign of the intensifying competition for talent. "Cisco's trying to create a partner-friendly environment for UC, and they're looking for a chink in the armor of Microsoft, perhaps in the hope of picking up frustrated partners," he said.

Cisco is likely basing its claims on the fact that HP and Microsoft are launching a set of UC-related services that encompass assessment, architecture planning and design, implementation, monitoring, management and support. HP is also flexing some of its considerable services muscle by dedicating a worldwide team of services professionals to support the HP-Microsoft UC solutions.

"Will they do some direct? Absolutely. HP has a services arm that needs to make money," Lendl said. "But in the grand scheme of things, the ability of services arms to address the actual UC market is pretty small. There will always be joint programs that have a direct component, but the broad channel opportunity will always be there."

What's clear about the Cisco-HP-Microsoft saber rattling is that it's already benefiting customers and channel partners from a value standpoint. HP's ProCurve networking division has been touting the lifetime warranty on its switching portfolio as a competitive advantage and Cisco has responded by introducing its own limited lifetime warranty on Catalyst E-3000 and 4500 switches.

Of course, this sort of healthy competition bodes well for the UC space because it gives solution providers the ability to bring a better product to market, says Rick Rumbarger, vice president of product marketing at Apptix, a Herndon, Va.-based solution provider.

"UC is always going to be a complicated sale. You have to have a mature channel that has skills in both voice and in networking and connectivity, and education is a key part of making that happen," Rumbarger said.