About this blog

News and analysis of developments in the enterprise communication industry and market with primary focus on Europe.

The author aims to tap into ideas, insights and thoughts of the readers to get varied perspectives.

Views expressed in this blog are solely the author's opinion and in no way reflect those of his employer.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Unified Messaging- vendor push or market pull?

Over the past three months I have been researching this market in Europe as some of you know by now. I have spoken to a number of you in the meanwhile. It is amazing how similar the views are amongst people with similar firms and how different they appear from a different set of stakeholders. When I interact with vendors, all I hear is that the technology is mature, solutions well tested and sufficient knowledge base has been created. It is true that the delivery systems are more sophisticated now than before. The channel vouch for this. However the channel also suggest that sales are still hard to come by despite constantly rising numbers of license sales submitted by leading vendors.

Before Christmas last year, I had interacted with a number of end users in sectors such as education, government, finance and banking. I was surprised by the relative lack of awareness amongst medium sized organisations. This constrasted with the savviness amongst IT folks of large organisations especially in banks and other financial institutions. These people not only knew what UM meant, some of them used the solution in their organisation. To confirm my fears, I surveyed my contact list (users) asking them if they used UM and if they did, how and where. I offered a very general definition of UM. Out of over 30 responses, only four (three of them work with vendors in the communication technology space while the fourth is with a channel organisation) suggested that my definition was not appropriate but rather very general. Yet except two of my respondents, none of the others use UM solutions at work.

I am at the final stage of my investigation. I would very much appreciate your comments if any.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Push or Pull? In or from where? Which target market? Enterprise or Consumer? Wouldn't it be a totally different ballgame if the UM had started from the bottom up? From the consumer to the corporate? Maybe, maybe not.http://www.mundialco.com/unifiedmessaging/2008/01/22/yambi-presentation-at-protoin-08/
http://www.mundialco.com/unifiedmessaging/2008/01/22/yambi-demo-screenshots/