Although last week marked the one-year anniversary of Microsoft Corp. and Nortel Networks’ Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA), both companies promise this is just the beginning and advise that more can be expected from them as mobility continues to move forward into the future.
The alliance was announced last July and since then, the companies said they’ve sold over 430,000 licenses for their joint unified communications technology solutions. The companies are committed to a four-year-long partnership that is expected to extend past 2010.
Greg St. James, senior director for the ICA alliance at Microsoft, said the success of the partnership shows two companies that have aligned their respective roadmaps well. While both companies admit the adoption rates of unified communications are still low within Canada, St. James remains optimistic and sees a bright future ahead.
“Now’s the time to invest because the market is still in its infancy,” St. James said. “We have a broad range of solutions that are proficient with customers and we make it easy for them to become trained.”
Jayanth Angl, a research analyst at London, Ont.-based Info-Tech Research Group, said improving communication by reducing the number of points of contact is one of the key drivers that lead customers towards unified communications solutions.
“You can reach out to others through more or less one single interface,” said Angl. “While enterprises are now starting to see the capabilities of these solutions, it still requires a bit of planning on their parts to see which vendors they want to align with.”
Along with the ICA, both Microsoft and Nortel have also established a joint Collaboration Center to help customers adopt unified communications solutions. Here, experts from both companies work to provide customers with an organized approach that helps them understand and successfully integrate these solutions into their business.
“Both Microsoft and Nortel are very channel focused,” St. James said. “We want to build a huge ecosystem with our partners and unified communications is one of the most important areas of growth for us in the market.”
Some of the key applications and systems that are being offered currently through the ICA, or that will be by the end of this year, include the UC Integrated Branch, Unified Messaging and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.
Sowmya Varadarajan, director of marketing for the ICA alliance at Nortel, said these solutions are attractive to customers because they’re simple and easy for end users.
“It uses standard interfaces and enables the best of both worlds by using an intuitive interface, while at the same time it still remains scaleable,” Varadarajan said.
Sowmya also said by leveraging this alliance, partners will be able to increase their revenue in the growing market space.
“As workforces become more mobile, these technologies are the building blocks for next generation enterprises,” Varadarajan said. “As we continue to come out with new solutions later on this year, we will stay committed to providing skills training to our channel partners.”
