Will Cisco and AT&T Go Mano-a-Mano in 2009?
What’s in store in 2009 for Cisco? Can you say s-e-r-v-i-c-e-s.
Just put yourself in John Chambers’ shoes. You’re looking for ways to grow the company, ways that will appeal to you and me even in 2009, the year of cost cutting. Network infrastructure? Nahh, you own that sucker. Unified Communications? Ok, but you’re already number in the number one, two or three position (depending on who you ask). Desktop? Got that going with UC and Webex Connect. So what’s left?
How about Unified Communications as a service? You leverage existing technology for a new revenue stream one that delivers strongly on the cost-cutting message. The organization already has experience delivering services through WebEx Connect announced earlier in the year. And it gets you into the cloud computing, which Cisco sees as the next wave for our industry.
"The hosted unified communications market is poised for significant growth,” says E. Brent Kelly, Wainhouse Research’s senior analyst and partner, “Large companies who now outsource both email and audio/Web conferencing will be looking at adding presence-enabled messaging and conferencing as well as click-to-call and click-to-conference capabilities." Wainhouse just completed a survey that shows that hosted services will drive UC market to a compound annual growth rate of 19 percent over the next five years reaching , reaching $13.4 billion by 2013.
An outright Cisco move into UC services, would pose a significant challenge to Verizon and other service providers, many of whom partner with Cisco today. Such a move today wouldalso mean relying on the Internet for voice delivery. While the Internet may be a fine delivery platform for the Web conferencing, would you really want to rely on it for corporate voice? A more likley approach woudl be to deliver a sservice offer provided by service provider partners, such as a Verizon. Alternatively, Cisco might complement existing voice offers, by providing presence and IM functions t ala last fall’s Jabber acquisition.
Chances are you won’t have long to wait. Look for a big announcement in this area in March at the Voicecon show in Orlando.