Simon Barratt

Convergence: The Key to Collaboration

Gary Moeller - Avaya
Andrew Davis - Wainhouse Research
Mike Fratesi, Cisco
Denis Fortier, Nortel


VoIP will bring more convergence.  Click to dial from email/IM

Is collaboration the key to convergence instead?

Mobile workforce drives collaborative tools.

Integrate a business process with a communication process.  Integrate inventory with phone system.

Gary Moeller - People live in Outlook - therefore they want to use Outlook as the launchpad for all collaborative activities.

Presence embedding is often viewed as a religious leap of faith.  Very hard to show the ROI of a new Avaya switch, if the justification is just convergence.  VoIP and converged backbones are only being implemented by the most bleeding edge organisations.

IP to IP telephony across different networks is still a challenge.

While the big guys are battling standards and interoperability Skype will shake their world!!!