Enterprise Communications enterprise connect

My Enterprise Connect Awards

April 04, 2012 by Dave Michels

Enterprise Connect 2012 took place last week in Orlando. It was a very good and very busy conference. The mood was good, the products and services were great. Overheard too many times:

We are not a technology company, we are driven by the market.
Unified Communications? You must mean Collaboration.
iPad = tablet = consumerization = mobility

On with the Awards

Best Keynote: Avaya. I enjoyed all of the keynotes this year. In a keynote, I look for: articulate vision, report card, announcements, flawless demonstration, and compelling presentation. Most unique keynote goes to Siemens Enterprise – more of a fireside chat.

Biggest Ticket: The Cisco Vpod. Reminded me of the EM50 Urban Assault Vehicle in Stripes. This instant video telepresence room within a room comes complete with HVAC, giant screens, lighting, and it offers a new walnut tabletop option.

Biggest Makeover: NEC 3C. remember those two key solution categories (appliance and s/w based), now it’s one solution that serves those categories, plus hosted.

Most Unique: Mitel. Just about every major UC solution has a variation on the single number capability, but most can’t maintain the charade with SMS/text – Mitel can.

Most Sneaky: Snom. Its backdoor strategy to Microsoft Lync endpoints seems to be working well.

Most Conspicuous: Vidyo. Judge us by our booth size, not our market share.

Most Invisible: Tie: Skype and IBM: Last year, Skype exhibited and delivered a keynote telling us that like it or not, Skype is used for business. Microsoft may have different plans for Skype now, but it’s still popular in business and we keep talking about consumerization. IBM delivered a keynote on collaboration and social business, it was very interesting and I wanted to learn more. Too bad.

Best Contradiction: Cisco. The company seemed quite clear and gleeful about the “Post PC Era” – mentioned it several times in the keynote, then proudly launched Jabber for Windows.

Newest Product: Aastra Connect in the Cloud. The ink was still wet on the brochure.

Biggest Disappointment: Tie: Siemens Enterprise re-brand and Lync 2012. Both remain theoretical.

Biggest Surprise: Avaya. Market leader jumps on cloud bandwagon.

Two Face Award: Sprint. Prominently featured as a new Cisco partner for hosted collaboration and prominently featured as a success story for internal conversion to Microsoft Lync.

Biggest Winner: Apple. The iPad was everywhere – every keynote, most booths, throughout the attendees.

Biggest iPad: Airwatch (probably 30′ tall).

Not a good week for Polycom. Video played a big role at EC12, but Polycom didn’t benefit from it. The Radvision/Avaya news got lots of attention. Lifesize, Vidyo, and Cisco had far larger and busier booths. Polycom was featured in the Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM keynotes – but neither Microsoft or IBM could successfully connect to the Polycom system.

Want to see some booths?

By Dave Michels

Dave is an independent analyst and founder of TalkingPointz which is focused on enterprise communications. In addition to this (free and paid) content on TalkingPointz, he contributes to industry sites, can be found at major industry events, and provides advisory services to vendors and financial analysts.

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Discussion

Marty April 4, 2012

Love the awards, Dave. Good insight and a great way to summarize the show.

Some of the ‘cloud jumpers’ such as Avaya are really just hosting… loved it when Brett Shockley said, ‘While you’re entering your user information, we’re spinning up your own virtual machine in the cloud.” Not sure that one copy of Aura software per user or company is a great way to scale, but it builds on their successful history of hosting.

Totall agree with Best Contradiction award. In their glee to bash Windows, Cisco even said, “If you all up all the iPads and Macs, Apple is shipping more than Windows.” Hey, wait, the Mac is a PC! So how does that count for “post-PC”? Funny how much they want to make that point.

If I could add an award, it would be for “Irrelevant Statistics” and woudl be a tie between Cisco, Avaya and Siemens as they all rolled out stats about facebook, twitter, and other consumer solutions in an attempt to add relevance to their enterprise communications systems. When they do that, it seems to make their enterprise solutions less relevant, not more so.

Thanks, again, Dave!

Reply
Hyoun Park April 4, 2012

I thought you were going to mention Mitel’s virtualization as well, which is still pretty impressive now. Apple definitely was ubiquitous, but Avaya did a very good job of establishing their capabilities and vision.

On the other hand, Polycom’s audio story got eclipsed by Dolby and their video story got eclipsed by Cisco and Vidyo. I think I heard more about Vidtel last week than from Polycom. Market leaders should be visible and prepared for events like this. If anything, I think Polycom’s story is much stronger now with the Accordent and Vivu acquisitions and the RealPresence Mobile launch, but it didn’t translate.

Reply
Arthur Rosenberg April 5, 2012

Dave,

Since I couldn’t be at the show, I appreciate your roundup of the vendors even though I did watch some of the the keynotes.

As Marty commented, the term “Post PC” is confusing. Isn’t it simply another way of describing a personal, mobile (wireless) computer (smartphone, tablet, etc.) as opposed to traditional wired desktop computers and telephones? If so, then it falls in the category of BYOD issues, which will require separate “dual persona” application management and access controls for business aand personal usage. It also means that private, public, and hybrid “cloud” solutions will quickly dominate business application implementations and increase the need for the wireless carriers to support access to enterprise-controlled, UC-enabled “mobile apps” for their subscribers.

Reply
dzkilnd April 12, 2012

Jabber is a BRAND, not just a desktop client, as your “Best Contradiction” suggests.

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