Yes, Unified Communications is a key innovation area for enterprises in 2008. But the enterprise mindset should be focused on desktop application integration, either with MSFT Outlook or IBM Sametime, together accounting for 90% of the market. That's why Nortel has teamed with both these players in the UC space, and why Cisco is going to have a hard time with their network-centric vertically integrated appraach, that may ultimately slow down application innovation.

I agree with the MOSS to Lotus Notes comparison. I was a Notes Administrator in a previous life and was a fan of the product. I was not very popular with my IT peers but the business loved me because of what I was able to achieve with the tool. When everyone else was embracing Exchange I held out with Notes because of the collaboration it allowed. I moved to Exchange 8 years ago but I never found Exchange equal to Notes when it comes to collaboration until MOSS 2007. Microsoft has finally been able to integrate a robust workflow and collaboration tool into Exchange with MOSS. A CIO should look at MOSS and determine if their business will benefit from its capabilities. As CIO’s, we are always talking about uniting business and IT, MOSS may be a tactical approach that many CIOs can use to accomplish that. Lotus Notes worked for me over 10 years ago.

James Jordan
President

Strategic Data Management, LLC
Experts in Data
www.sdmindy.com

You are a little slow to the mark on Unified Communications, many companies have been migrating to it for the last few years. The product suite from Cisco has matured and developed to be an effective system that integrates with email and provides a variety of conveniences an old PBX and standard email can't provide. Microsoft's offerings are late to the game and as usual are focused on selling more of their existing products. They really don't have the communications base underneath well defined. Call setup and handling, IP traffic management and systems redundancy are all mandatory to really make Unified Communications payoff. As for Facebook, blogs, and other social networking tools, they are more likely to waste company time than effectively improve teamwork and productivity. SharePoint does offer some interesting ways of managing information, but it also creates another void where data goes and gets lost and is hard to manage and keep current.