Adam Gartenberg's Blog

Rich Tehrani: IBM’s Big Unified Communications News

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• Author: Adam S Gartenberg
• March 17, 2008
• Category:  Sametime 

Rich Tehrani, President and Editor-in-Chief of TMC, has a very thorough writeup of his time spent at Somers last week listening to Steve Mills, Mike Rhodin, and other Sr. Executives talking about our Unified Communications strategy and plans.

Recently I spent a good number of hours at the sprawling Somers, NY campus of IBM where the company announced to the media their intention to spend a billion dollars in unified communications development over the next three years. IBM is a major player in the UC space but the company has been getting beaten up in the marketing department byMicrosoft ( News - Alert). Microsoft is late to the UC game in fact and some of their products are behind IBM (News - Alert). You wouldn't know any of this from the blitz of a campaign Microsoft is running however.

Simply stated, while spending on R&D is essential, the company will likely have to soon respond to the Microsoft PR and marketing onslaught. This meeting was a very positive first step in my opinion.

I also found this excerpt particularly interesting:

In fact Michael Rhodin, General Manager Lotus Software explained that today, IM is more important to the company than e-mail. He further explained that what the company is doing with UC - allowing it to be an open ecosystem where developers are fee to come up with new applications, is exactly what was done with Lotus Notes.

Read his full post for more.

Link:  IBM's Big Unified Communications News

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