UC Standards Group Doesn’t Include Cisco or Avaya

Hewlett-Packard, Microosft, Polycom and others have formed an alliance to promote standards in unified communications (UC) – but the group does not include two UC giants: Cisco or Avaya.

The UC Interoperability Forum (UCIF) plans to improve interoperability among unified communications products using currently established standards. The dozen or so founders also include Juniper Networks and Logitech, which late last year bought video conferencing vendor LifeSize Communications.

Hewlett-Packard is tipped to become a UC player following its purchase of phone company Palm. Juniper networks has signed a deal with Polycom for video conferencing. Microsoft also continues UC efforts, recently releasing a client for Nokia phones, and promising a UC appliance.

UC demand set to grow

Jeff Rodman, co-founder and CTO at Polycom, said that demand for UC products will continue to grow as businesses look to increase productivity while driving down costs. The technologies have “a lot of potential to help businesses do their business a lot more efficiently,” Rodman said in an interview.

That trend is reflected in analyst predictions for the space. Forrester Research is predicting that the market for UC inside enterprises in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific will hit $14.5 billion (£10bn) in 2015.

However, a key challenge in ramping up adoption is the wide array of products from different vendors, and of specifications that can be implemented differently from one set of products to the next.

“The mix of vendors and the mix of specifications are a continuing challenge to organizations,” Rodman said.

There’s also the issue of mismatched refresh cycles, which can cause hardware and software to be misaligned and unable to work together.

There are a number of specs for different parts of the UC landscape—for voice and video alone there is XMPP, SIMPLE for IM/P and H.323, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and XMPP/Jingle. There are myriad disparate protocols for data conferencing as well.