Sametime Unified Telephony is Gaining Wider Acceptance
Category Announcements IBM/Lotus Linux Lotus Foundations Sametime
Too small to consider any "Unified" technology ? Sametime Unified Telephony is priced by per user--so it scales down, as well as up. Today, in a conference call with IBM, a brain trust of David Marshak, Alistair Rennie, Bruce Morse, and Marisa Viveros provided an overview of Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT).
The concept of Unified Telephony has been a long-time in coming. Every study I've read cites significant advantages for integrating VOIP, video, messaging, collaboration, etc. However, until relatively recently, it's been the sort of gee-whiz technology that you see on The Jetsons and requires a single-vendor solution. No one wants a rip-and-replace solution (and we are all tired of vendor lock-in).
Bruce pointed out that with the 14 vendors who have already validated their telephony systems, SUT is now supported on 75% of all installations. More vendors are in the pipeline, and because the SUT communication protocol is running as a "ratified SIP" the validation has been averaging one day to complete. Clearly, there is an advantage to running with "open and published industry standards."
Allistair drew on the strength of being able to work "well with what exists" rather than re-architecting onto "a homogeneous stack" from a single vendor. He doesn't just mean the hardware pieces, but also the messaging core. SUT isn't only for companies with a strong IBM/Lotus presence, because it's been designed to mix well with different platforms that haven't been "burdened" by weaker collaboration capabilities. It's a marked advantage for IBM, that SUT has a "more practical vision" that integrates into existing equipment.
The occasion for the call was VoiceCon 2009, where a SUT demonstration was provided that was similar to the one premiered at Lotusphere 2009. I was at the Lotusphere presentation, and the interplay between different phone devices, Sametime, and back-end PBXs received welcome applause. At VoiceCon, IBM included an even larger variety of devices and telephony systems for their staged overview.
SUT will be released in July and it's going to deserve a close look. Gartner has already recommended it for it's "great potential." But, Gartner may also have been overly cautious about its lack of suitability for smaller enterprises.
IBM is already gearing up the next release of Lotus Foundations to include SUT.
Technorati Tags: Sametime Unified Telephony, Lotus Notes, SIP
Too small to consider any "Unified" technology ? Sametime Unified Telephony is priced by per user--so it scales down, as well as up. Today, in a conference call with IBM, a brain trust of David Marshak, Alistair Rennie, Bruce Morse, and Marisa Viveros provided an overview of Sametime Unified Telephony (SUT).
The concept of Unified Telephony has been a long-time in coming. Every study I've read cites significant advantages for integrating VOIP, video, messaging, collaboration, etc. However, until relatively recently, it's been the sort of gee-whiz technology that you see on The Jetsons and requires a single-vendor solution. No one wants a rip-and-replace solution (and we are all tired of vendor lock-in).
Bruce pointed out that with the 14 vendors who have already validated their telephony systems, SUT is now supported on 75% of all installations. More vendors are in the pipeline, and because the SUT communication protocol is running as a "ratified SIP" the validation has been averaging one day to complete. Clearly, there is an advantage to running with "open and published industry standards."
Allistair drew on the strength of being able to work "well with what exists" rather than re-architecting onto "a homogeneous stack" from a single vendor. He doesn't just mean the hardware pieces, but also the messaging core. SUT isn't only for companies with a strong IBM/Lotus presence, because it's been designed to mix well with different platforms that haven't been "burdened" by weaker collaboration capabilities. It's a marked advantage for IBM, that SUT has a "more practical vision" that integrates into existing equipment.
The occasion for the call was VoiceCon 2009, where a SUT demonstration was provided that was similar to the one premiered at Lotusphere 2009. I was at the Lotusphere presentation, and the interplay between different phone devices, Sametime, and back-end PBXs received welcome applause. At VoiceCon, IBM included an even larger variety of devices and telephony systems for their staged overview.
SUT will be released in July and it's going to deserve a close look. Gartner has already recommended it for it's "great potential." But, Gartner may also have been overly cautious about its lack of suitability for smaller enterprises.
IBM is already gearing up the next release of Lotus Foundations to include SUT.
Technorati Tags: Sametime Unified Telephony, Lotus Notes, SIP
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