VoiceCon 2009: What was hot?

The eternal question, usually asked 5 minutes after hitting the exhibit floor and repeated every half hour thereafter until I'm in a cab to the airport (And sometimes in the cab, if I'm sharing a ride): "What have you seen that's hot at the show?" 

Having gone through the meeting notes, slides, Twitter feed, and news posts from VoiceCon, here's what was hot at VoiceCon-

ShoreTel

ShoreTel got a VoiceCon hat trick by winning the "Best of VoiceCon" award for the third year in a row. This is an award not to be taken lightly, since VoiceCon attendees voted on products. Competition was heavy, with vendors pre-announcing news before the show and handing out bribes (chocolate, typically) to influence voters. 

Interoperability

Few enterprises operate a single-vendor IP communications solution, so Cisco, IBM, and everyone BUT Microsoft (more on them later) was talking up interoperability between unified communications solutions, IP communications solutions, and legacy phone gear.  

The telepresence/videoconferencing crowd, even stalwarts such as AT&T, were also talking up interoperability. Cisco's telepresence solutions can be extended to T1/E1 users and FiOS/DOCSIS cable modem infrastructure.

Bottom line: Nearly everyone wants to play well together, because they realize businesses don't have the cash or desire to flush an existing solution.

VoiceCon 2009: IBM puts Sametime Unified Telephony front and center
VoiceCon 2009: Cisco announces UC interoperability with Microsoft and others, plus an iPhone surprise
AT&T announces H.323 Telepresence support, drinks own champagne
VoiceCon 2009: Cisco extends telepresence capabilities 

Telepresence

Save travel dollars, save the environment, become more productive is the pitch for high-end telepresence solutions. Cisco, Polycom, and TANDBERG all came on strong with improved and different offerings. TANDBERG and Polycom represent the gold standards when it comes to telepresence solutions, but Cisco is a strong challenger because, well, it is Cisco.

VoiceCon 2009: Polycom boosts HD video, adds Microsoft device to UC lineup
AT&T announces H.323 Telepresence support, drinks own champagne
VoiceCon 2009: Cisco extends telepresence capabilities
Interesting IP phones at VoiceCon 2009 

Media phones

While the folks at Microsoft and OnRelay would like the desktop phone to just curl up and die, Avaya, Polycom, and Grandstream all have introduced media phones that are bound to stir up a lot of discussion on the future of the handset in the enterprise.  Avaya's supports USB memory stick configuration, Polycom's has a really nice LCD, HD voice support, and a built-in camera, and Grandstream provides an affordable option for tighter budgets.

First look: New product announcements from VoiceCon 2009 - FierceVoIP
Interesting IP phones at VoiceCon 2009
SLIDESHOW: Previewing new phones (and a UC client) at VoiceCon 

Cloud computing

Like it or not, cloud computing is here to stay.  Siemens may have brought the most impressive announcement to the show, porting its OpenScape family to Amazon's EC2 service as a proof-of-concept - but it isn't stopping there. The company plans to bring customers and partners as the next step, along with a SDK to get some of the 400,000 EC2 cloud developers onboard and doing mashups between OpenScape and other cloudware/cloud services.

NEC was also talking clouds, advising companies to be "cloud ready" as the move forward into more sophisticated IP communications applications. 

Disaster recovery, says both NEC and Siemens, is likely to be a killer app for cloud computing. 

Siemens goes to Amazon EC2 cloud for voice and UC apps
VoiceCon 2009: BoT (Best of Twitter) 

The six month ROI

Before the economic downturn, companies were happy to buy new systems with a 12 to 18 month payback on investment. Not any more.

Now managers are buying only when they can see a six to eight-month return on investment (ROI) - preferably one closer to six months.