I spent a few hours walking the exhibit hall at VoiceCon this week. In consumer world, we focus on iPhone versus Nokia, on the FCC 700 mhz spectrum, what is happening with Net Neutrality -we focus on device and bandwidth.
VoiceCon sharply brought in to contrast what the enterprise is excited about - software. How it will "communication enable" other business software and processes. And how the software will actually commoditize devices and bandwidth. And airfares.
Microsoft and CA had booths almost as big as the big telcos. The traditional gear manufacturers like Siemens were talking about their OpenScape Unified Communications software - the centerpiece to voice, messaging, collaboration, mobility. And how they would gladly work with anyone's hardware - Avaya's, Cisco's, Apple's and their own.
There was palpable excitement in the conference about fixed-mobile convergence - to move mobile minutes to the IP network. Cisco gleefully talked about how internally they have saved $ 6 million a year by moving 120 million minutes per quarter to IP based web and tele-conferencing. Gone are the 50c a minute per-person 800-conference bridges.
As consumers, we have seen glimpses of unified communications with services like Skype which has have brought us cheap, global, video calling and conferencing. GrandCentral which allows us to control where calls from groups of callers get routed to our various phone numbers. Multiply that exponentially with the cool applications - and savings - enterprises are about to get. Telepresence, for one and its bite out of the travel budget.
This slide show shows other products on display at the conference. Good times.
