The other day I had a long and interesting telephone conversation about where Voice 2.0 is headed and what it really means to end users. I haven't fully developed all these thoughts, but I'm going to share them here in hopes that perhaps they'll foster conversation and brainstorming among all you readers, and between some of the players in the sector that I'll name here.

This isn't directly focused on the entperise and unified communications of today, but it certainly does have to do with the future of Voice 2.0 in the enterprise as technologies mature.

First, let me identify some players I think are central to all this.

• iotum - Their "Relevance Engine" is a key piece. Presence and availability information are crucial, but they're also poorly understood by the enterprise business world. If iotum has a hurdle to get over, it's articulating relevance in a new way that makes better sense to business people
  
• TalkPlus - I think they're new announced offering will provide a huge connectivity piece for enterprises needing to control how employees will be connected. I also think they'll face competition from folks like Talkster who do similar sorts of things froma slightly different angle.
  
• GrandCentral - Ok, I panned this a bit when I first looked at it, but there is more there than meets the eye, There's some real value in a unified, single number approach.  I'm still juggling with where the fit is for me.
• SightSpeed - I think these guys are the key to video in many ways.
• Unyte - Another key piece, for the collaboration component.

There are others, but these are the ones that are central in my current thought process. For me, the real epiphany comes with mashup between them and the next generation. They are all doing, or will do some very cool stuff with our communcations flows.

Presence and availability is a key piece, and while relevance is the concept behind them both, relevance doesn't sell to the enterprise. The real vision is far, far broader than relevance. Today we look at iotum and see the ability to give users control over who contacts them - when, where and how. That's a piece of the future, but only one piece.

Service integration is crucial - voice, data and video, converged on a single set of tools. Unyte brings in collarboration, but that collarboration needs to expand to SighSpeed multi-user video coupled with application sharing. There's a piece we're just beginning to really understand.

Fixed mobile convergence is a piece, and it's sorely lacking today. FMC to me is more than passing a phone call to my WiFi network. That, to me, is a no brainer that just needs the right protocols to make it work. We could do this effectively right now if we really had a driving market. Every technology piece neede exists in some form today.

FMC needs more than that to work. I need to be able to make a call from my home office from my PC in the morning. Let it be a multimedia call with video and application sharing. But when I have to leave to drive, I don't want to lose the call. Let me hand off the voice stream to my cell phone on my WiFi network, then when I get in the car and drive away, seamlessly hand it to my cellular carrier. And when I get to my office, hand it back over to the WiFi network there. But then let me hand it off to the phone on my desk, a softphone on my PC, or let me re-engage a full video collaboration client on my desktop to rejoin the collaboration call. That's fixed mibile convergence, It's more than just the network. The network, or networks, are still nothing more than plumbing.

As for presence, availability and relevance, while iotum gives me cool stuff today, it's only the tip of the iceberg. Barely a toddler in terms of what the mature model will become. Today I can share presence with my buddy list with my contacts, that doesn't scratch the surface of enterprise value.

Imagine enterprise iotum coupled with the other technologies above. Bundle them all together and I see a customer service team that's beyond relevant. A customer can call their sales rep, but the relevant enterprise has every employee's presence and availability. Tie in the CRM system and what you have is a customer calling a sales rep and getting a choice. Why not let the customer choose whether to leave voice mail or ring the next relevant member of an account team who's available automatically? Think about the ramifications of enterprise relevance, presence and availability tied into call center mentality. Why not make the entire enterprise a revelant call center. We can know where everyone is, and their availability, and the tools with which they can communicate in the moment. Voice mail jail goes away and nobody ever need leave a voice mail message except by choice. Talk about the enterprise that's easy to do business with!. The relevnat enterprise.

But at the core, it's not relevance. It's not presence. It's not availability. What it is, is responsiveness. Communications at the speed of thought. It's universal accessibility. I remember years ago when I proposed telecommuting inside AT&T. The fear was that customers wouldn't like talking to me at home. The truth was quickly noted. I became the most accessible person.

When we think of the telephone network, one of the features that makes it so valuable for worldwide business is its ubiquitous presences. The phone is everywhere. Why not leverage Voice 2.0 technologies for the ubituitous enterprise. The enterprise that's always-on, always-accessible, always responsive? That, to me is the future. The always-on enterprise that provide instant communications with the resources around the globe that can give me what I need as a customer.

As these companies combine their unique solutions, and find ways to marry services, that's where the next generation of communications is headed.

Just some rambling thoughts for Sunday afternoon.


Technorati Tags: unified communications, always on enterprise, Voice 2.0