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UCIF aims to remove UC adoption roadblock

Big-name vendors team up to form interoperability body and call on rivals to get involved soon

Making it fit: UCIF claims interoperability is crucial to the market's success

A host of the market’s largest vendors have thrown their weight behind the Unified Communications Interoperability Forum (UCIF) and have urged the channel to get on board with the technology.

Founding members of the organisation include HP, Microsoft, Polycom, Juniper Networks and Logitech, along with subsidiary LifeSize.

UCIF has stressed that it is “not just another standards body” and that its remit is to ensure interoperability to improve customer experience, simplify implementation and drive adoption. An associated accreditation is expected to be ready to launch within 18 months, while members will also work to draw up a “three-to-five-year interoperability roadmap”.

Paul Phillips, Brocade’s regional director for the UK and Ireland, explained that his company would benefit from taking part in think-tanks and events, as well as having early access to test kits and certification specifications. “Brocade is exploring the benefits of upgrading membership,” he said.

Phillips said the organisation was designed to help drive business for all levels of the channel.

“The UCIF’s vision is to enable interoperability of open, standards-based UC hardware and software across enterprises, service providers and consumer clouds, as a means of generating incremental business opportunity for all stakeholders in the ecosystem and of increasing the business use of UC technologies and services,” he said.

Interoperability issues
Robert Stead, EMEA marketing director at Polycom, said solving interoperability issues would represent “the removal of a roadblo ck” to wider adoption. He stressed it was incumbent on all manufacturers to work together to benefit end users.

“UC is something that needs to recognise what is already there,” he said. “People will upgrade the systems they already have, rather than a complete forklift upgrade. That means UC has to interoperate.

“There is no vendor that is large enough to do all this. There are a lot of people [in UCIF] that have specific expertise, and all these things are complementary.”

Scott Lucas, director of product marketing at Juniper Networks, said the WiFi Alliance is an ideal model for UCIF to follow.

“It is market-critical to carry the WiFi logo,” he said. “We think that [UCIF] is a potential market-maker for the UC market itself.”

Lucas explained the first step for UCIF would be to formalise working groups and decide which interoperability issues should be the top priorities to address.

“One of the first issues we are likely to tackle is that of video interoperability,” he said.

Both Cisco and Avaya were invited to join UCIF, but have yet to do so. Lucas said it was not fair to read anything into this, given the organisation’s infancy.

Mark Gorzynski, chief scientist for HP Halo, echoed this sentiment.

“UCIF members continue to work with Cisco in other bodies and neither Cisco or Avaya have declined,” he said. “Larger firms sometimes need to get across company alignment on joining such boards – they are very welcome. We will definitely work to get those other vendors as participants.”

Different expertise
UC has been one of the industry’s most hyped technologies for several years. But, despite the fanfare, UCIF’s members stressed that theirs is still a relatively nascent market.

A representative for Microsoft said the channel’s UC expertise differed greatly between resellers.

“This probably varies widely in this early market and is highly dependent on the vendor affiliations of each reseller,” said the representative. “UC itself is the key growth area. However, if you consider the various types of UC – instant messaging and presence voice, video, data collaboration, conferencing – then the latter four have the least market penetration.”

Juniper’s Lucas claimed UCIF could address the UC market’s “most basic issues”, allowing VARs to focus on the more strategic issues with their customers. He added that now is the perfect time to skill up on UC.

“This is one of the most exciting potential areas to go into – in what is an early stage of market development – and really aggressively build skills and relationships of trust with customers so when any of them are interested in carrying out UC implementations, they will know where to turn,” he said.

Polycom’s Stead said resellers have to work out what role they intend to play in the market.

“It is important to understand where the opportunity is, partner with the right people and understand where you want to fit in all this,” he said. “Doing nothing is not an option.”

According to Gorzynski, UCIF will be central to the UC market’s development. He singled out problems with mismatched refresh cycles that misalign hardware and software resulting in solutions that fail to work together, and he highlighted the issue of standards that address single media and are interpreted differently by every vendor.

“Interoperability is crucial to UC’s success because the UC market has incredible potential to improve productivity and streamline business processes.”