Day 3 of the UC Strategies Conference: Bill Gates on Unified Communications redux
Here’s me at the UC Strategies UC Summit, taken with the IPEvo PoV. Not bad for a sub-$40 camera.
Most of the Microsoft small group presentation was “friend-DA” private so I’ll stay mum on the details. The majority of Eric Swift’s presentation was taken from Bill Gates’ OCS Launch presentation, but he talked about much more concrete functionality and roadmap. Without giving too much detail, there are some very compelling features coming to the OCS platform.
Michael Finneran is on stage beating WiMax to a pulp! It’s entertaining, but very US-focused. It’s an easy target after the Sprint-Clearwire debacle, but I never expected it to be huge in the US. WiMax is a great solution for developing countries and it’s certainly head and shoulders above the trendy metro wifi networks of last year. I’ll give Michael one thing, he’s darned entertaining. I tried to get a good shot but he was running all over the stage. It’s rare to see a traditional telecomm guy “get it” the way Michael does from a high level concept perspective.
Motorola came up midday. Despite knowing much of the inside story over there, I came away vastly unimpressed with their TEAM iniative. Engadget posted in March a prototype of the TEAM “devices”. In March they lacked phone functionality. Apparently they’ve now added that through a proprietary magic dual-band chip. I tweet’d “Motorola wants to pitch a story they can’t coherently explain” and even through the second presentation I’m not sure they have a good handle beyond a 50,000 foot concept. The various diagrams also show just how unsuccessful Motorola’s been in integrating Good Technology. For better or worse I think the TEAM concept puts to rest any speculation they will spin it back out. My guess it will stay with the handset unit post-split. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve long been a supporter of dual-mode phones with seamless roaming and I think it’s a great idea, but I think TEAM may be too narrow a solution to drive widespread adoption on its own.
Fellow blogger and twitter’r John Furrier had some additional thoughts on MS Live Mesh and the UC news today.
Marty Parker and Don Van Doren jumped up to explain the black art of demystifying ROI around UC. It was a great presentation I’m not sure I can summarize here. They also have some great worksheets and tools around calculating ROI that can only be found through them at UniComm Consulting. If you’re confused about UC ROI beyond the simple productivity calculations and diving into business process optimization they’re the resident experts and worth talking to. I did an interview with Don Van Doren tonight after the UCStrategies UC Summit. Keep an eye out for it tomorrow over at Hyperconnectivity.com.
