This publication has been discontinued on July 19, 2011.
In last 16 months, the collaborative communications space has undergone a tremendous transformation. What was here-to-fore a small industry - with few profitable companies - has emerged as a focal point for future revenues for some of the largest corporations in the world. It appears that a great battle will be raging in the near future for the heart and mind of the collaborative technologies user, with three distinct battle groups beginning to form: Enterprise Software Manufacturers (Microsoft, IBM, Oracle), IP Telephony Vendors (Cisco, Avaya, Nortel), and Integrated Collaboration Portal Providers (Polycom, TANDBERG, WebEx, Genesys). All are developing complete solutions designed to bring presence, IM, and integrated audio, video, and web collaboration products and services to the
enterprise desktop.
This report provides a comprehensive third-party analysis focusing exclusively on Cisco Systems' battle plans for dominating the enterprise collaboration desktop market: we describe Cisco's market strategies; we detail Cisco's full line of collaborative product solutions; we review Cisco's partners, and we analyze the company's strengths and weaknesses, concluding with our opinion on Cisco's probability of success in winning this battle.
In last 16 months, the collaborative communications space has undergone a tremendous transformation. What was here-to-fore a small industry, with few profitable companies, has emerged as a focal point for future revenues for some of the largest corporations in the world. It appears that a great battle will be raging in the near future for the heart and mind of the collaborative technologies user, with three distinct battle lines beginning to form:
The vendors of enterprise productivity tools who will add collaboration as a feature to their higher level software products. Key contestants will be Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, and others.
The telephony-centric vendors who are seeking to gain control of the enterprise collaboration desktop beginning with the IP-PBX. Main contestants here are Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, and Siemens. These vendors are adding presence, instant messaging (IM), video and web conferencing to native voice capabilities.
The integrated conferencing environment (portal) vendors. We believe two fundamental strategies have emerged. The first is from companies entering the battle from a video background, and who are now adding IM and web conferencing. Notable examples are Polycom, TANDBERG, Arel, and First Virtual Communications, although another dozen vendors could be listed. The second strategy comes from web conferencing group of companies who are now adding presence and integrated audio and video capabilities. This would include service providers like WebEx, Genesys, and Centra as well as numerous software developers like Macromedia and Linktivity.
Enterprise Software Challengers
Microsoft fired the first shot in this battle for the enterprise collaboration desktop in January 2003 when it purchased the number two web conferencing service provider, PlaceWare. Although Microsoft is not known for its service execution, this acquisition gave Microsoft an on-line events company as well as web conferencing software technology. This move provided Microsoft with the final element needed to create a unified software platform for providing voice, video, and data collaboration within Microsoft's Office suite of products. PlaceWare was renamed Microsoft Office Live Meeting (MOLM) in order to highlight the Office connection and to create a naming convention in line with the company's two to five year future view. Microsoft's entry into the collaboration space through the
PlaceWare acquisition legitimized in many minds the importance and the future viability of the high-stakes collaborative enterprise communications marketplace. Another Microsoft development during 2003 was the release of the Microsoft Office Live Communication Server (LCS). LCS is basically a SIMPLE1-based enterprise presence and IM server which Microsoft is touting as the foundation for a user interface that can launch multimodal communications sessions that may include audio, video, web, text chat or any combination thereof. It is not clear yet how Microsoft will bring MOLM together with LCS in some type of on-net, off-net seamless collaboration product; however, the LCS reinforces Microsoft's intention to bring desktop collaboration into the enterprise mainstream.
In July 2003, Oracle rolled out its first web conferencing offering branded simply as "Oracle Web Conferencing" (OWC). Available as a separate product and/or a hosted or managed service, OWC is also an embedded component of the Oracle Collaboration Suite the company's comprehensive enterprise software offering that provides real-time collaboration integrated with a calendar, email, file repository, voicemail, and workflow tools. Oracle Collaboration Suite is powered by a centralized Oracle 9i database and can be accessed through Microsoft Outlook or a web browser as well as by voice, wireless devices, and fax. Oracle stresses the aggressive pricing of the suite versus Microsoft's offerings as a major selling point.
In November 2003 IBM/Lotus did a major face lift of the company's entire collaborative software product suite by introducing new components while at the same time re-packaging and tweaking others. In the process, the five-year-old brand name for its web conferencing product Lotus Sametime was scuttled and replaced with "Lotus Instant Messaging and Web Conferencing" (LIM&WC). LIM&WC consists of three sub-components: a) an IM/presence and web conferencing server, b) a "connect" client that allows users to initiate participation in a web conference though a browser, and c) developer toolkits. Three optional components expand LIM&WC's usage by adding scalability and connectivity with off-LAN users:
1. Lotus IM Gateway to securely connect to other IM clients (i.e. MSN and AOL),
2. Lotus Enterprise Meeting Server which provides hosting and administration of enterprise-wide web conferences, and
3. Lotus IM Everyplace (previously Sametime Everyplace) to bring presence and IM capabilities to mobile phones and wireless PDAs.
IBM's thrust appears to have two foci: one is to position LIM&WC as a portal; the other is to encourage third party developers (and some developers inside IBM itself) to use the LIM&WC toolkits to build collaboration-enabled applications.
IP Telephony Contenders
IP Telephony first became a contender for the enterprise collaboration desktop over two years ago when Mitel announced a relationship with VCON under which Mitel IP-PBX users could make a "voice-first" video call and then hit a button to "add video." Since then Nortel has also added video to its IP-PBX offering.
In November, 2003 Cisco significantly upped the stakes by agreeing to buy web and audio conferencing provider Latitude Communications. Cisco already had a compelling offering of IP telephony products and a suite of IP videoconferencing infrastructure products; the Latitude acquisition filled a major gap in Cisco's overall strategy for developing an integrated voice, video, and data enterprise collaboration product suite. Cisco further rocked the industry in early 2004 when it announced that its CallManager IP-PBX would enable full IP video telephony functionality to certain TANDBERG endpoints as well as to desktops equipped with a Cisco IP telephone and a PC loaded with Cisco's VT Advantage software and camera. These recent desktop collaboration initiatives complement and
significantly expand the network infrastructure and IP telephony focus the company has had for several years.
Avaya, the leading PBX worldwide sales leader has not been idle either. While seemingly caught sleeping as Cisco introduced its new IP telephony product suite, Avaya has made great strides to develop its own IP telephony products. Avaya has also announced a joint development agreement with Polycom designed to enable IP video telephony capability when Avaya's IP-PBX is used along with Polycom's ViaVideo desktop PC product. Targeted for completion in the summer of 2004, the Avaya/Polycom IP video telephony partnership will certainly provide fierce competition.
Integrated Collaboration Portal Competitors
Polycom, a leader in the traditional videoconferencing market with products in both the group video and personal video spaces, has also been very active during the recent year. Polycom announced the acquisition of Voyant Technologies in November 2003, giving it ownership of a product line of audio bridges capable of reserved and un-reserved audio calls focused on the service-provider market. Polycom already had web conferencing, videoconferencing, IP telephones, and some limited audio bridging capability through the company's MGC bridge products (designed for video bridging but adapted to audio); however, the acquisition of Voyant bought Polycom relationships with key service provider customers such as AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Verizon, British Telecom, and NTT. Polycom hopes to leverage
these strategic relationships with new integrated collaboration products designed specifically for service providers.
In the second half of 2003 Polycom also began a serious effort to reposition Polycom Office (a concept) and Web Office (a product) while at the same time trying to clarify its marketing message to channel partners, customers, and service providers alike. While the company still has a ways to go on this positioning and messaging front, it is clear that Polycom's intention is to provide a unified collaboration environment, or portal, that will ultimately give customers the ability to go to one place and launch point-to-point and multipoint sessions that combine presence, IM, audio, video, and web media in a single, multimodal, mixed-device conference. The Polycom Office interface will unify the different audio and video bridges, conferencing servers, and other infrastructure components
in the solution. Instant messaging is also likely to be an important part of this user interface, whether based on a Polycom-proprietary solution or on a third party product. We believe that Polycom will carry this mantra of unified collaboration in two configurations one that targets enterprise users, and another that targets service providers (taking advantage of the Voyant acquisition) who will then be able to deliver unified conferencing services to their own enterprise customers.
In an unrelated development, Polycom also announced a strategic partnership with Avaya Inc. under which Avaya would sell Polycom's products worldwide. These key service provider relationships, the channel relationship with Avaya, Polycom's voice, video and data offerings, and Polycom's No. 1 market share in the videoconferencing space, place Polycom in a position to be a serious and aggressive competitor in the collaboration battles to come.
TANDBERG, Polycom's arch rival, has also been active, although the company has taken a very different tack. TANDBERG is using its scheduler and TMS management software products as the "glue" to put together an integrated conferencing environment with a single reservation interface that easily enables meetings with both video conferencing and web conferencing based on TANDBERG's endpoints and either TANDBERG's proprietary web conferencing implementation or on WebEx's web conferencing services. TANDBERG has also partnered with Cisco to provide videoconferencing systems that are compatible with the Cisco CallManager IP-PBX, enabling fully functional IP video telephony endpoints (i.e. TANDBERG endpoints that can do video call hold, video call transfer, transfer to voicemail,
etc.).
Other vendors, such as FVC and Arel, have designed desktop collaboration portals from the ground up based on Windows PC technologies. Although these companies are small players, their software based products have significant appeal since they operate on off-the-shelf PC servers.
Focus on Cisco Systems
Wainhouse Research believes that these three camps, Enterprise Software based on Applications Convergence, IP Telephony enabled through IP-PBXs and audio and video endpoints, and Integrated Collaboration Environments based on video and web communications convergence, will be the main competitors vying to win the battle for the enterprise collaboration desktop. All are developing complete solutions designed to bring presence, IM, and integrated audio, video, and web collaboration products and services to the enterprise worker. This report provides a comprehensive third-party analysis focusing exclusively on Cisco Systems' battle plans for dominating the enterprise collaboration desktop market: we describe Cisco's market strategies; we detail Cisco's full line of collaborative
product solutions; we review Cisco's partners, and we analyze the company's strengths and weaknesses, concluding with our opinion on Cisco's probability of success in winning this battle.
Table of Contents
1. ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION DESKTOP BATTLE LINES ARE FORMING
- Enterprise Software Challengers
- IP Telephony Contenders
- Integrated Collaboration Portal Competitors
- Focus on Cisco Systems
2. CISCO SYSTEMS: STRATEGIC REVIEW
- Emerging from the Economic Recession
- IP Telephony and Video
- Cisco's Channel Strategy
3. THE AVVID STRATEGY
- AVVID Components
- Clients
- Network Platforms
- Intelligent Network Services
- Internet Middleware
- Business Solution Integrators
- Business Solutions
- AVVID Partner Program
- Selected Cisco AVVID Partners in the collaboration space
4. CISCO'S ENTERPRISE COLLABORATION DESKTOP SOLUTION
- Cisco's IP Telephony Solution
- Cisco's IP-PBX: CallManager
- IP Telephones
- Voice Mail and Unified Messaging: Cisco Unity
- Audio Bridging Cisco MeetingPlace or Cisco Conference Connection
- Customer Contact Solutions
- CISCO Emergency Responder
- Cisco Survivable Remote Site Telephony
- IP Telephony Utilities
- Cisco's Audio and Web Conferencing Solutions
- MeetingPlace Deployment Options
- MeetingPlace Components
- Cisco's H.323 Videoconferencing Solution
- Cisco's Integrated Collaboration Capabilities
- MeetingPlace Integration with CallManager and IP Telephones
- Cisco's Integrated IP Video Telephony Solutions
- CallManager Integration with the MCM H.323 Gatekeeper
5. OUR ANALYSIS OF CISCO'S SOLUTION
- Cisco's Market Beliefs and Strategy
- Overcoming Myths
- Cisco's Market Strengths
- Cisco's Market Weaknesses
- Cisco's Product Strategy
- Cisco's Key Partners
- The Latitude Acquisition
- Cisco's Product Strengths
- Weaknesses in Cisco's Product Portfolio
- Product Futures
- MeetingPlace Integration with the 3540 Video MCU
- SCCP, SIP, and SIMPLE
- Long Term Product Possibilities
- Cisco's Competition
- Established PBX Vendors as Competitors
- Software Competitors
6. CISCO'S PROBABILITY OF SUCCESS
APPENDIX A: LIST PRICES
- IP Telephony
- Video with VT Advantage
- MeetingPlace
List of Figures
- Figure 1: Strategies for winning the battle for the enterprise collaborative desktop
- Figure 2: Cisco's three sales channel product flows
- Figure 3: Cisco's AVVID architecture
- Figure 20: Cisco's fully integrated IP voice, video, and web collaboration solution
- Figure 4: Cisco's IP telephony solution
- Figure 5: Location and gatekeeper call admission control
- Figure 6: Cisco CallManager Express deployment
- Figure 7: Cisco's 7900 series IP telephones. Source: Cisco Systems.
- Figure 8: Cisco Unity integration with Microsoft Outlook.
- Figure 9: Cisco survivable remote site telephony.
- Figure 10: Cisco's MeetingPlace audio conferencing and web conferencing solution
- Figure 11: Cisco MeetingPlace 8106 six slot chassis
- Figure 12: Scheduling a MeetingPlace meeting using the MS Outlook integration
- Figure 13: MeetingPlace form for attending a meeting from MS Outlook
- Figure 14: MeetingPlace IM Gateway
- Figure 15: MeetingPlace's IM gateway automatically creates a MeetingPlace link
- Figure 16: Chat participants automatically receive a join MeetingPlace meeting link.
- Figure 17: The MeetingPlace MeetingRoom user interface.
- Figure 18: Components in Cisco's H.323 videoconferencing solution
- Figure 19: Cisco MCM's multiple call functionality when using RSVP
- Figure 21: CallManager-MeetingPlace Integration.
- Figure 22: MeetingPlace XML integration with Cisco's IP telephones
- Figure 23: Cisco's integrated IP video telephony offering.
- Figure 24: Cisco's VT Advantage Solution. (Source: Cisco Systems.)
- Figure 25: TANDBERG video endpoint integration with CallManager.
- Figure 26: CallManager and MCM Gatekeeper integration for call admission control.
- Figure 27: IP and TDM PBX shipment forecast. Source: Infotech.
- Figure 28: Multimodal ways customers may arrive at a Cisco collaboration solution.
- Figure 29: Audio mixing in an integrated MeetingPlace/MCU solution
List of Tables
- Table 1: Cisco 3540 MCU video card calling capacity
- Table 2: Cisco 3540 gateway card capacities.
- Table 3: Cisco external gateway capacities
- Table 4: Wainhouse Research 2 or 5 year assertion probability assessment
