I love the smell of UCIF in the morning… Smells like interoperability. Someday this frustration’s gonna end…

– Telecom Director Bill Kilgore, “Voipocalypse Now”

Interoperability was a hot topic at VoiceCon 2010. All the major vendors wanted something to be done and pointed fingers at each other (more often than not, at Microsoft). Then finally in mid-2010 the UCIF was established by founding members HP, Logitech, Microsoft, and Polycom. Membership grew later in the months.

But glaringly missing still are the likes of Avaya, Cisco, IBM, NEC, ShoreTel, etc. Somebody at Enterprise Connect even asked, Can UCIF succeed without participation from these other major players?

It’s a valid question and concern, and admittedly, I’ve one of those who was bearish on UCIF. Anton Krantz of Microsoft and Robin Raulf-Sager of Polycom, representatives of UCIF, have a much more optimistic outlook.

There are UC customers out there that begs for greater interoperability among its communications components from multiple vendors. Well, let me rephrase that: There are customers that want interoperability out of the box. Presently, the lack of interoperability has actually created a middleware ecosystem for a company like NET (an UCIF “contributing participant”) which develops software to bridge the interoperability gaps among a variety of UC products. Obviously there is a market demand for interoperability.

However, it appears that the market demand hasn’t peaked enough to evoke greater cooperation and collaboration between UC vendors. And that’s probably because UC is still very much an enterprise-centric technology. Although UCIF operates similarly to the WiFi Alliance organizational model, WiFi was a general technology (both consumer and enterprise) and achieved success much quickly.

Progress is being made albeit at a slow pace. In December 2010 the UCIF Board of Directors approved an amended version of bylaws. It addresses concerns about the makeup of board members and makes joining the forum easier. More power is distributed among non-founding members with an increased number of directors. Unfortunately, three months have passed and still no significant membership developments.

On a brighter note, the forum has created a few workgroups to tackle more specific areas of interest within UC interoperability and with marketing UCIF. That’s a positive step forward because I believe the UCIF has more of a narrative problem than anything else. It needs to actively spread the pro-interoperability gospel — advertising, petitions, awareness campaigns, etc. Treat the lack of interoperability as a disease and bring it to the forefront of issues facing enterprises interested in UC.

For UCIF to gather steam may still take a few more years. And those years could prove to be costly for both sides — the vendors and the enterprises.

Actually, what I really want to say is “Unified Communications interoperability is f–ked.”

The latest partnership agreement between Polycom and Microsoft doesn’t sound encouraging to me in terms of interoperability in the UC space. Two founding members of UCIF scratching each other’s backs. I await with great anticipation the moment when HP, Juniper Networks, and Logitech hop into the hot tub for the fun, too. The UCIF membership page hasn’t changed much since May 2010 when the forum was established.

Glaring membership absences include Avaya, Cisco, and even IBM.

This is quickly becoming the Browser War or OS War taken to another battlefront. The UC War is once again, Microsoft versus The Rest, except this time the Redmond Giant has learned its lessons and publicized its peace offering. But seriously, it doesn’t really need alliances in UCIF. We all know that Microsoft can muscle its way to put Communications Server into your enterprise. Or sneak it in, since you’re already addicted to Windows, Exchange, and Office. And other vendors will go to Microsoft to make their products work with Communications Server anyway because their customers will request it.

I’m not knocking Communications Server, especially the latest incarnation, “14,” which is due out later this year. I have seen the impressive demo at VoiceCon Orlando. I believe it’s a good and ambitious enterprise product.

What concerns me is the lack of progress in UC inoperability as a whole. UCIF was announced to great fanfare. Now it’s more like a static website. Where’s the outreach? Where are the open letters? It’s starting to look like a Microsoft fraternity, disguised as an interoperability forum.

It appears that nobody is truly serious about UC interoperability judging by the lack of movement. Earlier this year during VoiceCon Orlando, interoperability was constantly mentioned during the keynotes, workshops, and panels. Interoperability — we need it, we want it, we will do it. But alas, I think company egos have eclipsed the desire to work with one another.

And that is a shame. Because interoperability will eventually happen, but now it’ll just take longer and cost more. For everyone.

Press release from Polycom:

PLEASANTON, Calif. – Aug 09, 2010 : Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) has signed a multi-year, strategic global agreement with Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) to deliver integrated end-to-end unified communications (UC) and to improve customers’ business productivity. Under the agreement, Polycom plans to develop and market standards-based UC solutions that span the enterprise, small-to-medium business, and government markets, that will encompass software, hardware, networking and services, and will enable customers to improve business productivity and reduce travel, telecom and IT operating costs.

Polycom and Microsoft share a vision for business productivity solutions built on standards-based platforms that work with the tools and applications people know and use today. The companies’ strategic agreement is a major step towards streamlining communications across messaging, video and voice with connected applications and devices.

“Microsoft and Polycom solutions play a critical role within our current and future unified communications strategy,” said Martin Smale, IT director at NDS, a News Corp. company. “We’re already benefiting from improved collaboration, increased productivity, and significant ROI based on our existing UC network, and we’re looking forward to leveraging the expanded offerings from two of our most valued vendors in the UC space.”

“Our research shows that nearly 70 percent of the companies considering a unified communications solution are thinking of deploying Microsoft Office Communications Server,” said Brent Kelly, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research. “These enterprises need seamless integration and interoperability between Office Communicator on the desktop and personal, group, and telepresence video solutions like those offered by Polycom for executive offices, meeting suites, and conference rooms. By working together, Microsoft and Polycom are making it easier for organizations to have a true end-to-end unified communications environment, which includes high definition video.”

Offering a broad portfolio of integrated solutions spanning voice, video and application integration for Microsoft UC, this agreement makes Polycom a member of Microsoft’s key strategic global alliance for the company’s UC business. As part of this long-term strategic agreement, each company is investing in product development, sales, and marketing. Through resources, investments, and strong field engagement, Polycom and Microsoft will deliver rich, compelling UC solutions, offering customers the flexibility to deploy the features that help them lower their costs, improve productivity and meet their unique business needs.

“Microsoft and Polycom are committed to a roadmap that will deliver interoperable UC solutions with choice and innovation in video conferencing and customer devices that will help transform enterprise communications,” said Gurdeep Singh Pall, corporate vice president of Unified Communication at Microsoft. “By integrating video, voice, instant messaging and conferencing solutions, Microsoft and Polycom give customers the ability to be present, anytime, anywhere.”

“Polycom and Microsoft deliver a winning combination to our customers around the globe by delivering seamless, easy-to-use, high-definition communications at the click of a mouse,” said Andrew Miller, Polycom president and CEO. “Polycom is 100 percent committed to delivering best-in-breed, standards-based, fully interoperable UC solutions to market, and Microsoft is integral in helping us achieve this goal and meet the needs of our customers.”

Product Development
The roadmap entails Polycom developing a broad base of solutions for Microsoft Communications Server “14″ and beyond, including:

• New and next-generation Polycom CX series endpoints optimized for Microsoft UC, featuring Polycom’s market-leading HD video and voice technologies
• New, innovative room-based video systems designed specifically for enabling direct integration with Microsoft Communications Server “14″
• Additional interoperable solutions between Polycom’s existing and future video conferencing solutions

Global Polycom / Microsoft UC Go-to-Market Initiatives

• Sales resources and training
• Integrated marketing campaigns
• Collaboration to develop and support channel partners
• Polycom participation in multiple Microsoft Technology Centers around the globe, with active demos already available in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, London, and Paris
• Global governance and cadence around voice and video UC solutions
• Common messaging and industry presence to drive adoption of UC

To learn more about the agreement, watch this video of Gurdeep Singh Pall and Andy Miller discussing the news.

About Polycom
Polycom, Inc. (Nasdaq: PLCM) is a global leader in unified communications solutions with industry-leading telepresence, video, voice and infrastructure solutions built on open standards. Polycom powers smarter conversations, transforming lives and businesses worldwide. Please visit www.polycom.com for more information or connect with Polycom on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

© 2010 Polycom, Inc. All rights reserved. POLYCOM®, the Polycom “Triangles” logo and the names and marks associated with Polycom’s products are trademarks and/or service marks of Polycom, Inc. and are registered and/or common law marks in the United States and various other countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Contacts

• Art Pettigrue
  Microsoft
  Tel: +1.425.538.0687
  artp@microsoft.com
• Robin Raulf-Sager
  Polycom, Inc.
  Tel: +1.303.583.5302
  robin.raulf-sager@polycom.com

Jamie Stark, Senior Technical Product Manager at Microsoft, posted some updates on the UC Group Team Blog, starting off by addressing recent developments in interoperability:

First off – on Wednesday, May 19^th, industry leaders including HP, Juniper Networks, Logitech / LifeSize, Polycom, and Microsoft announced the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF). UCIF is a non-profit, open alliance of worldwide technology companies that will develop interoperability profiles, certification, and testing programs in order to enable UC interoperability scenarios. The UCIF’s vision is to enable interoperability of UC hardware and software across enterprises, service providers, and consumer clouds, as a means of protecting customer’s existing investments, simplifying their transition to more extended UC networks, and generating incremental business opportunity for all stakeholders in the ecosystem. To learn more about UCIF, including the growing list of companies who have joined the forum, check out the website at www.ucif.org

Of course, Microsoft has been delivering practical interoperability solutions to our unified communications customers since the launch of the UC Open Interoperability Program, or UCOIP, in 2007.   The UCOIP is a qualification program for gateways, IP-PBXs, and SIP trunks services that is intended to ensure that customers have seamless experiences with the setup, support, and use of qualified telephony infrastructure with Communications Server.  Any IP-PBX, SIP/PSTN gateway, or SIP Trunking vendor that meets the qualification requirements, conforms to the specifications, and successfully completes the third party testing performed byTekVizion labs will have their solution published on the UCOIP web site.

The establishment of the UCIF has been welcomed news — for the most part — by vendors and industry analysts. Still missing in its membership are biggies like Cisco and Avaya, and the former doesn’t seem to have any intention of becoming an UCIF member anytime soon. Microsoft gladly signed up to be a founding member, and the company historically actively participates in any sort of industry forum because it knows it has a lot of influence being the top software company in the world.

But as Stark stated, Microsoft launched UCOIP in 2007. Don’t let the name fool you, however. Even though the “O” stands for “Open,” it really only pertains to interoperability with Microsoft’s own communications software. The official overview of the program:

The qualification program for SIP/PSTN Gateways, IP-PBXs and SIP Trunking Services ensures that customers have seamless experiences with setup, support, and use of qualified telephony infrastructure and services with Microsoft’s unified communications software and Microsoft Office Communications Online (BPOS-Dedicated).

So on the one hand Microsoft wants in on UCIF, but continues to spread the Interoperability Gospel According to Microsoft.

One has to wonder: How committed is Microsoft in making its UC products interoperable in the general sense?

John Stepp, President of Free Tech Consultants, is on the ground in Las Vegas for the InfoComm 2010 show. He graciously agreed to provide insideCTI some coverage and insight into the latest in audio/video business technologies and applications. Here he shares with us a topic that’s widely followed — interoperability from Cisco.

Cisco has just announced in their words an “immersive, multi-screen interoperability between Cisco and Tandberg TelePresence systems, and other third-party systems, by integrating Cisco’s Telepresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) on the newly acquired Tandberg TelePresence Server.  The solution helps enable multi-screen, HD video collaboration between all major telepresence vendors.”  Basically, the Tandberg blade will serve as a gateway device to help Cisco telepresence systems communicate with H264, SIP and H323 devices such as LifeSize.  Plus Cisco and Tandberg products will work together seamlessly.  The bridging of multi-screen offerings will allow more and more businesses to communicate with one another.  This is a quick Cisco Tandberg integration and shows that Cisco is leveraging Tandberg’s technology strengths.  It bodes well for greater future interoperability for video conferencing and a future when everyone can talk to and see each other.

I spoke with Mike Baird, senior director at Cisco Tandberg about the announcement and specifically about the juxtaposition of UCIF and TIP.  Mike said that Cisco would monitor the progress of UCIF and adoption rates of each protocol before making any decisions.  Since there have been no specifics announced by the UCIF, there is really nothing to go on at this point.  John Chambers is certainly investing heavily in the video space and my feeling is that there will be greater and greater interoperability to drive demand both in the enterprise and with consumers.  As today’s press release states, “Today’s product announcements support an end-to-end video collaboration architecture that includes endpoints, infrastructure and cloud-based solutions.”

Cisco is announcing a number of other initiatives as well.  The Cisco TelePresence Commercial Express is a new small to medium business play that combines three infrastructure components – Cisco TelePresence Manager, Cisco TelePresence Multipoint Switch, and the Cisco TelePresence Recording Studio – onto one server using VMware.  The product will deliver the hardware and software (specifically the VMware) to make it easier for smaller companies to adopt advanced Telepresence solutions.  The SMB market is definitely the next frontier with lots of dollars at stake.  The productivity enhancements of video collaboration will be too big for the SMB market to ignore and Cisco seems well positioned to compete with the smaller and more nimble competitors.

Other announcements include Movi™  for Mac™ and enhancements to the MoviPC which will deliver far end camera control, ClearPath, Multiway and ICE protocol support.  ClearPath is an exciting technology.  That improves video quality by minimizing the effect of packet loss on networks not originally designed for video. ClearPath will be implemented across the broader Cisco portfolio.  Mike Baird said that it would work in an environment with up to 10% packet loss.  This could bring a lot more users into the mix. Could we see the beginnings of a B2C push at Cisco?

New software releases for the MSE 8710 TelePresence Server blade and the MSE 8510 Media2 blade are also being announced.  This will triple the capacity of the MSE 8000 to provide individual multipoint conferences; up to 48 screens in a multi-screen telepresence call with continuous presence (MSE 8710) and up to 60 screens in a single-screen multipoint call with continuous presence (MSE 8510 Media2).  What a great way to bring everyone into the conversation.

Although we are still a long way from ubiquitous video conference interoperability (when anyone can make a video call to anyone else), at least we are now moving quickly toward it.  The Cisco Tandberg announcements will provide positive impacts not only for their customers, but for everyone that invests in video technology.  Video will indeed be the most important enterprise technology for the next decade and beyond.  After all, phones, even smart ones, are radio and telepresence systems are HDTV.  No one has a big radio in their living room and soon interactive video will be everywhere.

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The state of unified communications (UC) is anything but. Vendors have reasons not to offer interoperability, but often at the risk of losing customers because it is one issue that’s on top of many customers’ minds. Some major vendors are taking the first step to ease this pain by founding the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF). Kudos to the founding members for initiating this: Microsoft, HP, Juniper Networks, Polycom, and Logitech (LifeSize). The organization aims to model after the WiFi Alliance in terms of establishing interoperability guidelines and certifications based on existing UC technology standards. The Forum doesn’t intend to create standards.

This is a step in the right direction for UC faithfuls. Obviously, the news would’ve been even better if Cisco was already a member. As of now, one cannot help but think this as a defense play against Cisco’s dominance, perhaps to eventually force Cisco to join the interoperability wagon. That depends highly on how well the Forum conducts its business because if it turns out that nobody cares for the “UCIF Certified” sticker, then there’s nothing to be gained for vendors to test their products for interoperability.

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