Enterprise IM Shift: What to Do with the PBX?

Though we take it for granted that businesses "must" use a business phone system, that might be quite so true in just several years. In fact, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video and text chat at the largest global enterprises.

Gartner estimates that 95 percent of workers in leading global organizations will be using IM as their primary interface for real-time communications by 2013. If that proves correct, we may now be witnessing the last wave of business phone system upgrades, as lucrative as the IP phone business, in its managed, hosted and premises-based incarnations, now appears to be.

There are other possible changes in store. Voice has been a one-to-one sort of communications pattern; mostly real time but with an ever-increasing asynchronous format. But with wikis, blogs, Plaxo, Facebook and other tools with a social and "push" updating capability, more forms of communication shift to a one-to-many, asynchronous mode.

One sort of "broadcasts" what one is doing, working on or needing help with, and the network just sort of responds as appropriate. Not good for control freaks, the ego-obsessed, the self-absorbed or mildly incompetent. People who are more respected, more trusted, more helpful, more knowledgeable and open will get more help than those who are in some significant ways "non-social." Winners and losers will be produced by the shift of communication modes.

As AOL's third IM survey shows, "everybody" now uses IM in their "consumer" life roles. The issue is how that will play out in the business context.

And though one might not yet see the change in the small business market, IM systems have moved from the fringe to become a key part of an enterprise’s collaboration infrastructure and increasingly are displacing existing forms of communications from ad hoc telephone calls and emails to pre-planned meetings and video conferences, says Gartner.

For many knowledge workers, instant messaging (IM) is as critical as having access to a telephone or to e-mail and enterprises that haven’t already done so should start incorporating IM into their critical business processes immediately, say analysts at Gartner.

“Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 percent currently to nearly 100 percent by the end of the decade,” said David Mario Smith, Gartner research analyst.

Midband Ethernet, Everything Else is Growing...

It has been a good year for suppliers of midband Ethernet connectivity equipment and access services. Heck, it's arguably been a good year for access services, period. Where providers used to get asked for T1s, they now get asked for DS3s. Where they used to get asked for DS3s, now customers are asking for optical connectivity. It's the same story on the consumer access front: more bandwidth, more often. That's what video will do to a network.

80% of Mobile Calls Go to Just 4 People

"Although mobile phones make it easier to keep in regular touch, a typical user spends 80 percent of his or her time communicating with just four other people," says Stefana Broadbent, an anthropologist with the User Adoption Lab at Swisscom. Think of it as the long tail of communications.
.
Broadbent also says different channels get used for distinct reasons. Mobile calls are for last-minute coordination. Texting is for “intimacy, emotions and efficiency.” E-mail is to exchange pictures, documents and music. IM and VoIP calls are “continuous channels”, open in the background while people do other things.
.
Also, you won't be surprised by this finding, but texting is on the increase. “Users are showing a growing preference for semi-synchronous writing over synchronous voice,” says Broadbent.

And though enterprise IT managers might not like the idea, private communications are invading the workplace. Workers expect to be plugged into their social networks while at work, whether by email, IM or mobile phone.
.

iPhone Breaks Record

In case you were wondering, Apple over the weekend sold more than 700,000 iPhones to rocket past analyst predictions and shatter AT&T's record by selling more iPhones in three days than Motorola's RAZR did in its first month. Some say that isn't unexpected, and the real challenge is selling the next couple of million. So far, consumer behavior is in line with the hype and at&t's and Apple's expectations.

Google and GrandCentral

Some of you know I am a big fan of Google and GrandCentral. Well now Google owns GrandCentral. And while Google can not fairly be said to desire to be a communications service provider, that is precisely what GrandCentral is. A provider of a unified communications service, not a unified communications network, though. So count Google as among those firms now offering a unified communications service.

Some might see this as competition for Skype or Jajah (I use both), and there is some logic to that notion. For the most part, I don't see it that way. Google now is a provider of unified communications. That's the story.

Comcast says it Could; Not "Would"

“We’re not necessarily saying we want to offer 100 or 160 megabits” per second access speeds, says Comcast CTO Tony Werner, referring to the DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade Comcast is planning. Using channel bonding, DOCSIS allows a cable operator to support downstram bandwidth as high as 480 Mbps and upstream as high as 120 Mbps, on a shared basis.

And that’s the key. Two bonded TV channels (6 MHz each) will support that amount of bandwidth from a fiber node to customers served off that node, possibly an area of 500 or more homes in any given location. At 60 percent video penetration and 30 percent cable modem penetration, that implies a potential customer base of about 90 homes or businesses.

If three customers really wanted 150 Mbps downstream and 40 Mbps upstream, that would chew up 12 MHz of bandwidth, equivalent to two analog TV channels.

So unless a cable operator wants to reclaim a fairly significant amount of television bandwidth, it isn’t going to be able to provide such speeds to more than one or two customers in a fiber-served area.

The DOCSIS 3.0 upgrade is supposed to start in 2008.

iPhone Apparently Forces Helio Policy Change

Wireless service provider Helio recently announced a fee for access to YouTube video on its handsets. It just about as quickly rescinded the policy after it became clear iPhone handsets would be able to access YouTube content just like any other Web content. The switch shows just how easily a serious competitor can force a walled garden approach to crumble.