IBM ups the ante in UC battle for big business

IBM has upped the ante in the battle for UC dominance this week committing $1 billion to UC research, development and acquisitions over the next three years. Stung by Microsoft's aggressive move into its big enterprise space, IBM is fighting back with a series of upgrades to its Lotus Sametime communication and collaboration platform. IBM's $1 billion commitment was made at a briefing this week led by Steve Mills, the senior vice president of IBM's software group.

The funding commitment follows an IDC prediction that the UC market will be worth $17 billion by 2011 and as both arch rival Microsoft and now Siemens have announced new UC server platforms. Siemens Communications enters the UC fray hoping to leverage its voice and carrier experience. Siemens is a working example of the evolution from carrier to enterprise that is now characterizing much of the vendor plays. Its all software, fully integrated and ready-to-use-now OpenScape platform has changed the race for mid-sized to big enterprises that has been traditionally an IBM v. Microsoft contest.

But IBM says it Sametime platform is part of a 10-year heritage of providing  messaging, voice and, more recently, video to large enterprises. With 20 million clients installed, IBM does not intend to simply let others take away its hard-earned Rolodex of clients.

Maybe. Reports of IBM's demo this week of its new unified telephony features highlighted the ability to route calls to various devices and setting rules on how to handle calls based on status. Call forwarding has been around for at least 20 years so lets hope there is a better feature to sell when it finally hits the market in December. In a space on fire with new products, features and alliances, December seems a very long time to wait.

Meanwhile, there are a whole swag of smaller vendors really pushing hard into the enterprise space. IVT's Evolution PBX, Fonality's PBXtra and even Google's Grand Central Beta are offering sophisticated find me, cellphone integration, presence and call management features. Fonality has teamed with Dell and hopes to exploit Dell's 30 percent share of the U.S. desktop enterprise market.

But the real battle is at the big end of town and IBM has already integrated Sametime functionality into Lotus Notes to bring UC and collaboration together to compete against Microsoft's OCS/Office and Exchange platform. IBM last week got a PR bonus after Frost and Sullivan awarded the Sametime platform 2008 North American Enterprise product of the year.

For more:
- IBM pledges $1 billion for UC Article
- IBM Lotus Sametime wins two awards Release

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