Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Microsoft. Show all posts

Friday, December 14, 2007

Windows Vs. BlackBerry in Enterprise?


A recent poll of enterprise wireless subscribers found 84 percent of respondents who do use smart phones, use a BlackBerry, according to InfoTech. Palm Treo and HTC devices trail and Microsoft OS devices, though growing fast, appear to fare no better than fourth.

But Windows Mobile finally is making inroads. "As such, the world essentially will come down to RIM vs. Microsoft in the enterprise market," says InfoTech.

More than 70 percent of respondents say email is the most important function of a smartphone, followed by Internet Wi-Fi access at 12 percent, the survey found.

More than 80 percent of respondents indicated they also use text messaging.

About 49 percent of survey respondents across all enterprise sizes said they were using wireless data card, with nearly 38 percent reporting a preference for the Verizon Wireless network.

Sprint the second-largest base at 24 percent. And speed apparently matters. Some 81 percent of respondents would switch operators to get faster speeds.

If Microsoft Had Designed GMail...

A funny spoof at http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-11-20-n35.html

Friday, December 7, 2007

iPhone: Some Glimmers of Enterprise Adoption


SAP, Salesforce.com and scores of smaller developers are letting sales and finance teams work away from the office on their iPhones, says Reuters. SAP, in fact, has broke with precedent by introducing a version of its upcoming customer relationship management software for the iPhone before launching versions for mobile devices from Research in Motion and Palm.

In SAP's case, its own salespeople demanded it, according to Bob Stutz, SAP SVP.

There still are some issues many of us believe will be resolved over time. "Push" email and over-the-air synchronization are some of the features a really enterprise class iPhone would have to support. Integration with Microsoft Outlook is an issue, but basically a licensing deal.

Some potential business buyers probably are holding out for a model that runs on faster wireless networks, but that is a problem being resolved by Apple and at&t already.

One barrier some users might continue to have, though, is the relatively higher error rates for entering text, compared to other devices with keypads.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Another Ridiculous Patent Suit

Technology Patents, a Maryland entity having its principal place of business in Potomac, Md, (address P.O. Box 61220, Potomac, MD 20859, http://www.arismardirossian.com/), has filed a patent infringement suit claiming that 131 carriers, handset suppliers and application providers have infringed a patent covering global transmission of text or short message service (SMS) communications.

Technology Patents alleges that all of the defendants, which include T-Mobile, Vodafone, China Resources Peoples Telephone Company Ltd, AT&T, Samsung, Palm, Microsoft, and Yahoo! (among the 131 defendants), have caused international text or SMS messages to be sent to and from Maryland, thereby resulting in infringement of the asserted patents in Maryland.

TPLLC has asked for a permanent injunction against the defendants, enjoining them from providing international messaging operations and capabilities in the U.S. market.

My views on this, as previously mentioned, are that there is way too much use of "patents" as a business weapon or means of extortion, and too little use of patents as a genuine way to spur the formation of intellectual capital. We aren't talking about one or two "infringers." We are talking virtually the entire global telecommunications industry here. Can that possibly be the case? Or is this yet another example of "prior art" that should never have been given patent status in the first place?

It's crap.

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

Will Android Disrupt PCs?

Though most of the speculation about Android's impact concerns what might happen with mobile apps on mobile devices, mobile Web, mobile carriers and device manufacturers, there are other angles. Let's assume lots of apps start to get developed around Android. Then assume people really do start spending lots more time with Web apps of various types on their hand held devices, even if today that does not seem to be common.

Once those apps are written, will they start to port to PCs? After all, any app well-enough written to run on a mobile with severe display and input capabilities, compared to a PC, might be fun to use even on a PC that suffers from none of those limitations. Basically, anything Android runs can appear as a widget on a desktop or laptop. Widgets are fun. They are personal. They are customized. They are easy to add and delete. They don't require lots of thinking, processing or storage.

Of course, that might have really serious implications for PC operating systems. In a new way, we might see yet another iteration of the thin client approach to applications. In essence, that is what software as a service is all about. Android just might change the paradigm for PCs, since it essentially will assume services are in the cloud. It will take a while before we can determine whether this is realistic or not.

Google has argued Android and its ecosystem might lead to ad-supported devices. Might it also someday lead to a resurgence of interest in thin client PCs? Microsoft will hope not. But network-centric participants in the communications and entertainment industries might see new possibilities.

Photo by Andy Voss at the BroadSoft Connections conference. Can you figure out why I think thin client and mobile Web access seems promising, even when multiple mobile smart and feature phones are in the quiver? I have an office and a desk. I just don't use them, even when able to use the "office." A nice view of the animals and the vegetation is much better, so long as I have power and wireless access of one sort or another.

Google Issues: att and Verizon


Google hopes to do to the mobile market what it has helped do to the traditional Internet: bring people closer to content. At an important level, that means Web apps surfing on a mobile should have a consistent, if not identical experience, as the same operation on a notebook or desktop PC.

In that regard, Google is engaged in a genuine coopetition: it needs legacy carriers as partners even as it competes with them. And every potential partner knows that what is good for Google might not be good for anybody else.

Google already has jumpstarted its effort in a big way, picking up China Telecom, NTT and KDDI, plus Sprint and T-Mobile in the U.S. market, T-Mobile Deutschland, Telefonica in Spain and Telecom Italia right at the gate. That gives Google carrier agreements Apple and Microsoft never got that fast. And Google's operating system and platform now are global from the get-go.

That means the carrier blockade is broken. Verizon and at&t might or might not join up with the Android effort. But they no longer can stop it.

Of course, Google will proceed on multiple fronts. It won't get where it wants by forcing everybody to use Android. So it will work with carriers when it can, or work around them if it has to. From a stategic perspective, Google wants its apps and experiences on every device, if possible, with or without Android.

Which means some accommodation with at&t and Verizon is possible, indeed likely, at some point. If Android gets traction at Sprint and T-Mobile, not to mention elsewhere, neither of the two largest providers will want to be frozen out of the action.

And that will be true even if Google ultimately emerges as part of a bidding group, perhaps even a winning group, in the 700 MHz spectrum. There are lots of stakeholders who gain if a robust mobile Web experience can be created. Not the least of which are firmware, chip and software providers from the legacy PC space (Microsoft being the salient exception, as it already is a major and growing mobile OS and application provider.

We should preclude nothing at this point, in terms of Google becoming an owner, at least in part, of a major broadband network; producing its own branded devices; getting "top of the deck" exposure on other devices and operating systems or other as-yet-to-be-developed ways.

Google is determined to be a force in mobile and it has lots of ways to proceed, simultaneously. If its gets what it wants, it won't need its own network, devices or apps. Others will do those things. If Google doesn't get what it wants from others, then it will have to consider creating those capabilities itself. Either way, Google in the game for good.

The only unfolding issue is how a complex set of relationships unfolds. Those who want Google to disrupt less will find that their own actions can help tip Google one way or the other. The same holds true for those who might want Google to disrupt more. If they are willing to commit their own capital, they can nudge Google in that direction.

And keep in mind: major technological innovations tend to achieve less in the near term than most think, but far more in the long term than observers expect.

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Microsoft Aims to Mobilize the Enterprise


One issue enterprise information technology staffs must contend with is the difficulty of managing and securing mobile devices used by enterprise associates in the same way they manage desktop PCs. But Microsoft thinks it has a solution. Microsoft next year will roll out the Microsoft System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008, a new mobile-dedicated server solution that helps companies manage Windows Mobile phones as they would their Windows-based laptops and PCs.

Using Mobile Device Manager, companies can deliver new applications to phones over the air as well as by mobile virtual private network. Samsung's Blackjack II smart phone and at&t Wireless are two early partners.

Blackjack II, a new Windows Mobile 6 phone featuring GPS that will be updatable to support Mobile Device Manager, will be deployed by at&t in a Mobile Device Manager 2008 configuration.

In fact, at&t and Sprint both say they will support Mobile Device Manager for business customers next year.

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

The PBX Era is Ending: Microsoft


Microsoft has formally launched Office Communications Server and a new version of Office Communicator, the OCS client, and expects the new platform will "change the business structure" of the PBX business, says Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

"The era of dialing blind, the era of playing phone tag, the era of voice-mail jail, the era of disconnected communications...that era is ending," says Jeff Raikes division president.

Gates points to a survey Microsoft commissioned that indicates just one in three enterprise users have successfully transferred a phone call. Even fewer ever have set up a conference call, says Gates. Such opaque systems are going to be a thing of the past, he says.

"This is a complete transformation of the traditional business of the PBX, which is sort of like the mainframe," says Gates. "We live a life of rich digital communications but the phone isn’t part of it."

"It is our view that wherever you see the name of an employee, you should be able to right click and see where they are reachable, right now," says Gates. "People also should be able to use their mobile phones to the business phone system."

And while OCS is designed to integrate with existing business phone systems, "over time, the lower cost structure will be to not have the PBX," says Gates.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007

HTC Touch: On the Cusp of Something Big

Something big is going on in the handset market, which appears to be developing clearer customer niches as device capabilities start to diverge. But the big thing isn't simply the handset proliferation. The proliferation of devices is creating lots of niches, and also showing why mobile is such a powerful way to do voice.

It isn't simply mobility. It is the ability to create human affinities for communications services never possible before. Marketers talk about "branding" their companies and services to create an image of quality, reliability, dependability, fun or some other attribute. But who really believes them?

Most consumers seem to regard every mobile provider as a functional substitute for some other provider. Ford or Chevy. There are brands. It simply isn't clear that the brands mean much.

But consider perfume. Perfume is so personal that the branding is everything, the actual fragrances like operating systems. Perfumes also are ultimately personal. A person doesn't buy a different perfume because it is on sale. And on what logical basis would any fragrance be "better" than another?

Of course, that's not the point. It isn't about "better." It is about "me." The whole point of perfume marketing is to create an indelible sense that a fragrance is the personification of "me." That's sticky. That's loyalty. That's the complete antithesis of a commodity.

Wireline service is nearly impossible to personalize. But wireless service is nearly infinitely capable of segmentation, personalization and creation of niches because the handsets personify the service. This is a very big deal.

But back to HTC. It isn't clear yet whether the touchscreen interface itself will become into an actual niche, but that feature certainly is associated at the moment with devices we might say are "fashion phones." And there are two devices clearly in that category using touchscreen technology: the iPhone and the HTC Touch.

As iPhone sets records for sales of the first million units of a new handset, Taiwanese phone maker HTC says it has sold approximately 800,000 units of its Touch smartphone as well, over just about the same timeframe. While not yet available in North America, the Touch features the same sort of touchscreen interface used by the iPhone.

Both the Apple and HTC Touches have touchscreens, Wi-Fi and media playback.

HTC has already announced a successor to the Touch, the Touch DUAL, a phone that adds 3G broadband and a slide-out keypad, borrowing concepts from Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices. It should launch in Europe later this month.

Originally an equipment maker for carriers and other handset vendors, HTC in the last two years has embarked on a major campaign to sell its own branded phones. The company specializes in innovatively designed handsets and mobile computers, many of them aimed at the enterprise market.

Like most HTC devices, the HTC Touch and the Touch Dual use the Microsoft Windows Mobile operating system.

The company also has launched three other devices: a 3G version of the ultramobile Shift computer that runs on Windows Vista; the P6500, designed for tough environments such as hospitals and police forces; and the S730, an update to its popular S710 phone that like its predecessor includes a slide-out qwerty keyboard in addition to a traditional mobile-phone keypad.

Even the "fashion" segment is going to evolve. Verizon is rolling out devices aimed at the more price conscious end of the fashion segment, especially where what is really needed is voice and text, without heavy Web, media player or email support.

As it seems to be turning out, though mobile phone "service" might be something of a commodity, the handset experience is anything but, and getting richer all the time. That essentially means mobile service is the closest communications equivalent to "perfume," clothing, music and other human products that have very high and very personal human meaning.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Voice Mashups Disruptive or Not?

Iotum recently shifted gears and decided to take advantage of Facebook APIs to create a conference call app inside Facebook. Many of you know what Skype has been doing in the area of encouraging third party development around its client. And of course Microsoft has made clear its intention to place communications within the context of every expression of its desktop productivity suite.

Some people would argue this move to voice as an attribute of every application spells the death of traditional "communications as a service." So far, of course, there is no evidence of this, though there is plenty of movement within the service industry. Neither is there any evidence that people communicate less when they have the new tools; the reverse typically being the case.

So far, at any rate, one would have to say that the advent of voice as an application, as an inherent attribute of other experiences and activities, simply is creating incremental revenue opportunities and end user utility. To the extent that it negatively affects the "service" business, providers of services already are transitioning away from reliance on "voice" revenues in any case.

Enterprise phone system providers hope to do the same, and speak only of "unified communications" these days. It isn't the calling, they seem to say; it's the integration. Not an unwise choice given the fact that Microsoft Office Communication Server provides a complete alternative.

But maybe this time around we shouldn't worry so much about disruption. Choice will do nicely. Human beings are starting to have lots more choices, and that's a good thing. Companies will do well providing those choices. It will be enough.

Voice and communications increasingly are available to users as discrete services and integrated applications. This trend isn't going away. But the explosion of choices and richness do not inevitably spell doom, or automatic success, for any contestant. Calling entities "dinosaurs" doesn't hobble them. Nor does "disruption" always succeed. Quite the opposite seems to be true at this point.

Friday, September 7, 2007

Microsoft Vista Service Pack Near Beta

As a follow-up to his email sent to Microsoft execs about Vista issues, Alec Saunders says: "Coincident with my note to Microsoft about Windows Vista quality yesterday, Microsoft let it be known that Vista SP1 would be going into beta in a couple of weeks, and surprise surprise, a substantial focus is on quality."

"Following the email I sent, two Microsoft senior execs responded yesterday — Steven Sinofsky who runs with the Windows platform organization, and Jeff Raikes, President of the Business Division. Among the many things in Raikes' mails was a question about how well I liked Office 2007, a product that I absolutely love. When I told him that, he observed that Sinofsky was the VP in charge of shipping Office 2007, and that he was applying many of the same methodologies to Windows Vista."

"Sinofsky gently chided me for having rose colored glasses, observing that PnP in Windows 95 routinely fried his network cards. Perhaps, he was saying, Windows Vista isn't as bad as I've described it. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that two key areas of focus for his team right now are application compatibility, and the video subsystem. Many of the Windows updates that go out are focused on these two areas, and that seems to be a good chunk of the focus in SP1 as well."

"Time will tell. As John McKinley pointed out, this is a franchise issue for them. They have to get it right."

Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Microsoft iPhone Competitor?


Since every other manufacturer of handhelds has been scrambling to create new devices that can compete with Apple's iPhone, it is only logical that Microsoft will do so as well. SoMindy Mount, corporate vice president and CFO for Microsoft's Entertainment and Devices Division, says it's not "unreasonable" to think that Microsoft will integrate photo, music, and touchscreen features into a Windows Mobile product in the future.

Microsoft's idea with Windows Mobile has been to move everyday business capabilities, such as accessing e-mail, from the PC to the mobile device. However, "Being able to do pictures and music is something that consumers are going to want, so it's a natural thing for us to want in our product road map," she says.

Friday, August 31, 2007

Or Maybe Google Phone Looks Like This...

Who knows? The point is that Google probably has to get involved with handsets at some point, just as Microsoft now has to supply phones, to get other things done. Google wants to stimulate mobile search so it can sell more contextual ads based on location. Microsoft wants to sell more unified communications applications. Each might have to play in the device arena as part of a broader effort to meet a business objective. Voice is just something people expect a mobile to do, even if the supplier objective really is revenues built on mobile search and advertising.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Vista is a Damn Disaster


From: Alec Saunders
Sent: August-29-07 9:54 AM
To: Steve Ballmer; Jeff Raikes; Steve Sinofsky

Subject: regarding Windows Vista

Steve, Jeff and Steve…

I am writing you both because I know you from my days at Microsoft from 1992 to 2001. And to put what I’m about to say in context, I have been a Windows PC user since Windows version 1.02, and my home is stuffed full of PC’s, networks and servers… all running Windows – XP, Vista, Home Server. I worked on the launches of MS-DOS 6, MS-DOS 6.2, Windows 3.1, WFW, NT 3.1, NT 3.51, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows 98 SE, and Windows ME before leaving the company. I’m a self-professed geek and will willing put up with a lot of pain in order to have the latest technology as well.

Now that you have the context for who I am, I want to tell you that I am seriously losing faith. My experience with Windows Vista has been a rank disaster. At this point, I believe it to be worse than Windows 98, which many consider to be the worst quality Windows product that Microsoft ever released. Specifically:

1. Driver quality is low. The ATI graphics card I have installed in my PC regularly causes a spontaneous reboot. My HP scanner doesn’t have a supported driver anymore.

2. Partner software quality is even worse. For example, over the weekend I installed Sony’s software for the HDR-SR1 (their new high definition camcorder) and lived through a series of spontaneous reboots. On one PC I was able to do a system restore. On another, uninstall worked. However, at this point I am simply unable to retrieve or view video files from that Camera, as they are all recorded in the new AVCHD format.

3. The OS quality is also low. Subsystems sometimes stop working for no reason. The PC I have printers attached to simply decides not to print, periodically. Then the print spooler on all of the other Vista PC’s attached to it simply stops and has to be manually restarted.

4. Microsoft software hasn’t been fully tested on Vista either. I use Foldershare, quite a bit, which works intermittently. My Windows Live OneCare software sometimes works and sometimes not… on some PC’s and not others.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say it’s no surprise to me that one of the top stories on Techmeme this morning is that one in six new laptops are Macbooks, and not Windows. I myself have seriously looked at abandoning my investment in Windows. My Macintosh owner friends encourage me to do so, and don’t seem to have the same kind of trials with PC’s that I do. They appear to be able to just open them, use them, and put them away. Parents I know are opting to buy their children Mac’s, apparently because it relieves them of the need to be IS manager for the home.

The driver, Microsoft software and OS quality issues are Microsoft’s alone. However, the partner quality issue is an evangelism and certification issue. It seems, from where I sit, that the evangelism effort that the Windows 95 launch team undertook was not matched by the Windows Vista launch team.

This issue impacts me daily. I spend at least an hour a day fixing PC problems, whether on my tablet PC in my office, or at home. I can’t continue this way, and if I can’t I would imagine a lot of other customers can’t either.

Regards,

Alec.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Web 2.0 Corollary: Email as Content Context


With IBM Launching Sametime and Microsoft getting ready for its OCS launch, we might note a corollary to the trend that has communications being embedded within the context of applications and content. One trend has communications (voice, video or audio conferencing, text messaging, instant messaging, email) being embedded within enterprise applications or portals.

At the same time, stand-alone communications tools such as email are morphing as well. Where today email is a stand-alone communications tool on the desktop, it seems to be pushing in a new direction. It seems to be becoming a tool to coordinate communications or content from RSS feeds, blogs, wikis, IMs, and voice.

Instead of using a document attachment, email might simply point a user to a link that displays a page, a document, a news feed, a site or client where a piece of information or content resides, rather than leading a user away from the message.

Zimbra, for example, pops up other information that embedded in a message. Zimbra retrieves the information and pulls it into the email, instead of opening a link that takes the user someplace else.

So it might not make sense, someday, to separate out a user's "communication" activities from a user's "information" or "content" activities. One will communicate when using or accessing information or content, and use or retrieve information or content from a "communications" application.

New Yahoo! Mail Launches


Yahoo! Mail has launched in the U.S. market. The updated former email client expands the Web mail service into a "social communication" tool, adding the ability to send text messages to cellphones directly from e-mail. The latest update also illustrates a trend: "communication" and "content" apps are blurring and blending. At the same time, communications are shifting, in part, into the context of social networking sites, where communications is a "background" feature always available, and where the current willingness and ability to communicate is known to each social network "buddy."

Yahoo! also has tweaked the interface to make it easier for people to go back and forth between email, instant messaging and text messaging, and to access content from inside the client itself.

The new service includes two real-time communication features that are the first of their kind from a leading Web mail service. These include the ability to send free text messages from Yahoo! Mail to mobile phone numbers in the US, Canada, India, and the Philippines, and the ability to send instant messages (IM) from Yahoo! Mail to members of the world's largest combined IM community, including users of Yahoo! Messenger and Windows Live Messenger2.

The new Yahoo! Mail enables people to select how they want to communicate with their online contacts: by e-mail, instant message or text message to a mobile phone number.

U.S. users now can right click on underlined dates, names and keywords within messages and take additional action, such as adding events directly to their Yahoo! Calendars, adding friends to their Contacts, immediately viewing a Yahoo! Map of an address or performing a Web search on a keyword.

Yahoo! says the client will operate with the speed and responsiveness of a desktop application. A co-branded version of the new Yahoo! Mail will also be available in the fall to customers using the following broadband Internet services: AT&T Yahoo! High Speed Internet, Verizon Yahoo! and Rogers Yahoo! Hi-Speed Internet. The new Yahoo! Mail will be available this fall to Yahoo! Small Business Mail users as well.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Microsoft OCS Starts to Disrupt


Microsoft's Office Communications Server 2007 is going to disrupt market share in today's business phone system market. It also is going to take share and rearrange markets in other areas you might not expect, such as the test and measurement space. Huh? Isn't voice quality testing, on both qualitative (subjective) and quantitative (mean opinion scores, for example) dimensions, something that specialized test and measurement firms do? Well, yes.

But Microsoft also is bringing to market its own "quality of experience" server that automatically tracks end user voice quality no matter where a call is placed--from inside the enteprise or at a hotel. No network test probes are required.

That's just one more example of how incumbents are finding their core businesses under threat of rearrangement from upstarts with deep pockets, strategic motivation, different visions and deep expertise in software and networking.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Microsoft OCS Managed Service for SMEs?


Microsoft's Office Communications Server hasn't begun shipping in general release. But that hasn't stopped OCS from garnering significant mind share among enterprise information technology managers. Some recent surveys by the Gartner Group and Wainhouse Research show OCS in the top spot among unified communications providers, according to Gurdeep Singh Pall, Microsoft corporate VP.

Pall positions OCS as an alternative to private branch exchanges (business phone systems) in either the time division multiplex or Internet Protocol or hybrid flavors. But Pall also notes that OCS obviates the need for a PBX of any sort, though it interoperates with IP and TDM systems. That's one reason Microsoft is introducing a new line of desktop phones that work with OCS.

Less attention has been paid to the issue of how small and mid-sized enterprises will some day be able to use OCS. Warren Barkley, a principal group program manager at Microsoft, says a hosted service ulitmately will be made available to SMEs.

Barkley simply noted that small organizations generally lack the IT resources to set up and run an OCS style unified communications system. It wouldn't be the first hosted service Microsoft offers.

Microsoft already offers a hosted collaboration platform, LiveMeeting, and is moving to offer applications such as customer relationship management as services.

Monday, August 20, 2007

Skype: The Ultimate Windows Externality


"On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption triggered by a massive restart of our users’ Windows-based computers across the globe within a very short time frame as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update," Skype says.

Not everybody buys that explanation. But, if true, it has to rank as the most massive, unexpected software interaction Windows ever has inadvertently caused.

The high number of restarts apparently caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction, Skype says. Some have argued that the outage proves peer-to-peer networks are inherently unstable.

It's hard to test that assertion since Skype uses a modified P2P architecture with a sign-in process that is more "client-server" and centralized than most other P2P networks.

Some think there was some sort of hacker attack, but Skype denies it. "We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed."

If the Microsoft routine updates were, in fact, contributory or causal, it would rank as the most significant network-wide interaction anybody ever has seen. Just another example of the way applications are reshaping the way global networks perform.

As some of you know I have recently been dealing with interactions caused by a Vista upgrade, mostly of the "we don't talk to Vista" sort. I will say one thing, however. Vista seems to be much more robust than XP was about handling "hibernation" operations. XP used to become unstable after several hiberation operations, at least on my machines. I have not found that to be the case with Vista.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Microsoft Vs. Cisco

For an unfortunately old telecom sort of guy, it really is something to watch the coming battle Cisco and Microsoft will be waging over voice services. If you've been around long enough, it seems discomforting that the key battles are not to be waged between Nortel and Lucent, or Avaya and Nortel.

In fact, it also is discomfiting that the coming battle won't even really be about voice per se. Instead, everything now hinges on capabilities in the unified communications or collaboration areas. Communications requires dumb pipes of high quality, to be sure. Beyond that, most of the heavy lifting now can be done by the applications.

So in some genuine sense, the whole global telecom business is about dumb pipes. Not completely, but largely.

Still, voice and real time communications remain challenging disciplines, though that generally is under appreciated by most people.

Microsoft probably is going to discover that, as Cisco has.

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