Link to: Three Amigos - MS Education Gurus

Posted by Gurdeep Singh Pall
Corporate Vice President, Unified Communications Group

"In the next three years, we predict that UC will become the norm in business communications, more than half of VoIP calls at work will include more than just voice, and your communications client will enable UC with more than 1 billion people*.  Three years from now, new applications written by corporate developers, system integrators and software vendors will be communications-enabled by default. We predict that three out of every four new business applications will include embedded communications."

PBX Extinction Level Event - Lessons Learned from Wang

by Thomas B. Cross CEO

TECHtionary.com - MCSForum.org & Tele-PresenceForum.com

Ghost of PBX Past

A long time ago, I was told by a Vice President to quit typing and get off the Wang word processor because typing was a job for secretaries.  Today, there are few secretaries (assistants) and we all type.  I loved the Wang word processor, it was easy to use, never failed and did one thing very well.  PBXs are like that.  They do a few things really well, never-rarely fail and somewhat easy-to-use (except that no one knows how to use telephone features).  Saying that Wang which employed 40,000 employees at its peak, doesn't exist anymore and it's likely that many of the PBX manufacturers will face the same fate.  Microsoft's entry into the "communications" business is culmination and realization that voice is not a separate monolithic standalone device like a Wang word processor but quite simply just another software application feature like Word.  If you prefer a technical explanation, voice is just another one of many packets on the network. 

Ghost of PBX Present 

In the present, Gurdeep Singh Pall, Corporate Vice President, Unified Communications Group, said this week in Microsoft's Official Blog "more than half of VoIP calls at work will include more than just voice, and your communications client will enable UC with more than 1 billion people."  A couple of takeaways from his comments are: 1) people don't just talk they do other things which including an increasing amount of IM-Instant Messaging, presence, mobile, context, location, applications sharing, social networking, video tele/presence along with one or many other functions and 2) UC-Unified Communications features will also be used inter-company communications or as it's known in Microsoft Communications Server terms as a "federation."  Federations between companies can be easily setup in less than a minute allowing SIP "presence" communications via the internet without the need of the PSTN.   Bottom line, the PBX like the Wang word processor simply cannot do everything that people want to do nor likely need to do in order to operate their businesses.  So what does this really mean. 

The good news is that SIP-Session Initiation Protocol is an established and viable protocol not just for voice but all kinds "presence" applications and capable of accommodating future applications including expert systems, AI-artificial intelligence and virtual reality to name a few.  Since SIP is an "open standard" it enables the customer to select from the best-of-the-breed in SIP user end points, telephones, conferencing equipment and other devices including your air-conditioner or home energy management system.  The SIP Forum (http://www.sipforum.org) even has a SIG-Special Interest Group working on "smart grid" issues.  

Whether you pick Microsoft or another SIP-solution, here are three of the benefits of the SIP open standard. 

First, customers can pick from a variety of leading SIP-based user call control platforms to build a complete SIP solution best suited for your business.

Second, SIP eliminates dependence on a single vendor for features platform which means companies can use high-performance SIP user devices while using different hosted, managed or other SIP providers.  In other words, Microsoft is not the only solution but one of many solutions. 

Third, SIP protects customer investment with interchangeable components and systems.  For example, customers can swap out a call server without having to swap out the phones, which can account for 60% or more of the cost in a large enterprise SIP implementation.  This also means that considerable savings can be achieved through the user of "soft" endpoints.

Ghost of PBX Future "Presence"

In summary, the era of the PBX has passed and we are moving into the era of "presence" where communications takes the form of such activities as:

Multi-media - voice, applications, data, video, 3D, virtual reality, animation

Multi-messaging - email, IM, multi-screen, blog, wiki, content management system

Collaboration-Knowledge - search, analysis, collaboration, consensus

Endpoint-Systems - devices, buildings, military, mobile, homes, cars, implants, 

This is not to suggest these are the only kinds of presence but to consider that communications will take many forms which include; person-to-person, person-to-machine, machine-to-person and machine-to-machine.  This means every device will be UC-enabled.  *Mr. Pall refers to 1 billion people and when you add in devices such as tele/presence systems, servers, and emerging devices such as machine control systems, this means that more likely 3-5 billion devices and people will be enabled in three years.

Like the old adage the end is nearer than you think, it may be a decade or more before PBXs disappear but like the end of Wang word processors, it is certainly coming.

Reference: The first PBX was a cordboard placed into service in the Old Soldiers' Home in Dayton, Ohio, in 1879. The first systems were non-standard modifications of CO switches.  AT&T offered the first standard PBX (No. 1 PBX) in 1902.  Source: A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System: The Early Years (1875-1925), Bell Telephone Laboratories, Incorporated (1975)

Thanks to Ray Horak - author ofTelecommunications and Data Communications Handbook (2007, 2008)