Published via L: 2013-05-16 21:07:20
I'm still not convinced that the cloud is the long-term panacea.
I was recently asked what I believe is the most over-hyped technology in UC these days, and my first thought was "the cloud." Don't get me wrong�I believe that the cloud offers great opportunity for many businesses and is a great way for companies of all sizes to access UC capabilities in a relatively cost-effective way. Cloud-based services will be especially attractive for specific capabilities, such as contact center, and I expect the majority of new contact center deployments in the coming years will be cloud-based.
Blair Pleasant
is President & Principal Analyst of COMMfusion LLC and a co-founder of ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the...Read Full Bio --
My Two Cents
I just finished reading an article by Blair Pleasant on whether Unified Communications (or UC) will end up in the Cloud. As it relates to this article, my question is whether her scope of cloud is specific to UC in the cloud or enterprises relying on cloud in general for all IT needs? For now, she's right that UC is not moving to the cloud because the cost of UC in the cloud is more expensive than staying in the premises based data center, which is likely accurate. Dr. Brent Kelly @ Constellation recently released a study to this effect and it clearly demonstrated that TCO of UC in the cloud for now is more expensive than buying your own servers, configuring them, putting them in a leased data center and so on and so forth.
However, if the scope of Blair's article is just UC, I would say that so far, most enterprises agree with her when they have "voted" with their own feet to stay where they are. She correctly points out that specific vendors (Fonality and 8X8) and I would say specific sub-markets (of UC) like IP Telephony have evolved over the last 10 years to where hosted IP PBX's are almost the norm now. Cloud-based UC solutions featuring predominantly UC packages have not been in the market for greater than 2-3 (maybe 4) years if you stretch it. And I mean UC in its most restrictive scope.
If you give UC some time to catch up to the Hosted IP Telephony market (as a separate market), you will find that cloud-based UC will overwhelm premises based UC for the very reasons mentioned by her. Internal IT staff will have lost control over the ability to integrate all of the discreet components that make up UC - it's not just UC, it's really Hosted IP Telephony or IP PBX (Broadsoft, MSFT Lync Voice, Cisco HUCS, Fonality, 8X8, etc.), it's the UC packages from (MSFT Lync, Cisco, IBM, ALU Enterprise, Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Siemens, and don't forget GOOGLE) and video conferencing (Polycom, Cisco Tandberg, Vidyo, VidTel, even MSFT Skype, and don't forget GOOGLE). Each silo is independent from each other. This changes when you can allow cloud specialists or managed service providers to deliver these independent or integrated services with all of the advantages listed below. It's really going to happen.
I would say the only question will be where it [the cloud] will happen. Public clouds for the enterprise? Maybe, maybe not. Amazon's AWS offers an amazing solution set with as much security as most any external data center. Please note, if this cloud initiative happens for all of the enterprise's SW, HW and other assets, then you can be guaranteed that UC will get dragged along (at that point, the game is over). UC is not sacred by any stretch to any enterprise. Alternatively, the enterprise could say, I want the cloud to remain in my data center. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it's not. In this case, the enterprise will engage a "cloud specialist" to deploy an OpenStack or CloudStack or Eucalyptus private cloud in their same old data center. In this case, at least the enterprise has finally taken the first step (safely so) into their own private cloud. Note the disadvantage to this approach: the enterprise is still buying their own servers and putting them in their own data center. However, this this means that the nose and the head of the camel are now in the tent. Numerous other cloud providers will win significant market share here as well, which could be a new source of revenue for Telco Service Providers (or anybody who owns a network).
One last point re UC and the cloud relate to a point that Geoffrey Moore, author of "Crossing the Chasm" has made numerous times. Systems of Engagement (such as CRM (salesforce), social solutions (like Yammer, Quad or Connections) IP Telephony (Fonality, Broadsoft, 8X8), and even HR in the cloud (like WorkDay) SHOULD be in the cloud (it is a much more efficient place for UC to reside). UC is easily defined as a System of Engagement. No real argument can be made that UC needs to be in the data center (outside of pricing like Dr. Kelly demonstrated). Cloud security is now often cited as more secure than an enterprise's own data center. Geoffrey Moore does agree that some Systems of Record (key corporate "data" or "information") need to remain locked tightly in the enterprises data center (for the time being), but UC does not fit that super high value profile. Even so, numerous public clouds and most private clouds offer all the security and HIPAA compliance that would be required.
More so than ever before, UC's migration to the cloud is in process. If only because enterprises are embracing the idea of putting everything in the cloud. Step by step, pieces of the UC puzzle are making their way (as noted by Blair's article). Blair makes a great point as it relates to "Integrating" the different component pieces and the different vendors in the cloud is a big opportunity but also a big unknown. How do you get many of these large vendors to play nice with each other in a cloud way? No small task, but the work will get done.
Dave Michels is right. BYOD will then become BYOL and then the nose and the head in the tent will soon become an entire camel in the tent! UC will be in the cloud.
The advantages of cloud especially in the enterprise are:||(1) version insurance (my personal favorite b/c I can't tell you how many Fortune 1,000 co's are on 2 or more versions old sw pkg's, which just shouldn't ever happen to an OEM's best customers in today's world); ||(2) as Dave says - cloud is exponentially more agile;||(3) choice of cloud - public, private and hybrid;||(4) focused activities by IT personnel, especially when the IT service is not core to the enterprise;||(5) IT flexibility / elasticity / scalability - in terms of hw, sw (licenses), bandwidth; and||(6) cloud pricing is a debatable issue for now - but not for much longer.
I'm still not convinced that the cloud is the long-term panacea.
