Seth Godin wrote another insightful entry today which tells us a lot about where our industry is headed. In the early days of the PC, Wordperfect had the word processing market virtually locked up for everyone using DOS. When Windows came long, the WP people took their time porting over to that new O/S platform. As a result, customers chose MS Word and Wordperfect was obliterated in short order.

When the music industry shifted to a new platform, from record stores to iTunes, many of the historically successful music labels quickly faded into the sunset.

When the platform changes, opportunities exist for new innovative players to shake things up and beat competitors stuck in their old ways.

Unified Communications is changing before our very eyes. It used to be about proprietary voice platforms: Nortel, Avaya, Siemens, NEC..even Shoretel. Customers would select a vendor and use all of their fancy applications to communicate and collaborate. That’s changing and fortunately, Avaya has provided you with the ultimate game changer: Aura. If the past teaches us anything, the voice platform soon won’t mean too much. Customers will pick and choose UC applications that are best for their business. What type of phone or phone system they have will be as irrelevant as what kind of television they watch Mad Men on.

The question is, who will empower them to have that kind of flexibility. Session Manager (whether it’s Cisco’s, Siemens, or Avaya’s) is the new platform. Lucky for us, Avaya has the best story here.  And yes, as the customer picks the UC apps that fit their business, Avaya’s at the top of the foodchain. My guess is the really clever solution providers will sell the client on this new architecture that gives them more power and flexibility first while the competition dukes it out on applications which will probably be commoditized eventually. The trick is to build a business that unlocks the value of this platform for your customers.

Good Selling,

Tom