Telephony/Communications Integration

In late 2006, I finally started to get interested in computer integrated communications. I tend to get interested in a new subject area when the associated technology (hardware or software) begins to get integrated with business applications. As far as I was concerned this began to happen when Unified Communications and CEBP moved into the early adopter phase. I am thus tracking this technology area now. It is a growth area.

In dealing with this topic and other topics in the Focus Series, the postings are not spur-of-the-moment thoughts. They are a piece-by-piece attempt to cover the whole technical area and provide useful information on it, including background information and explanations of terminology. The following are postings on this topic:

AVAYA and SOA Seeing that Avaya was embracing SOA sparked my interest and thus prompted the first posting on this topic.
What is CEBP (Communications Enabled Business Processing)? This is primarily and introduction to what CEBP actually is.
What Is Unified Communications? I wrote this because I realized that what IBM and Microsoft were saying about Unified Communications and what Avaya and Cisco were saying was distinctly different. I try to explain both views here.
Ten Reasons Why Google Will Dominate Mobile The main point to note here is Google’s telecom assets and particularly, its ownership of Grand Central.
DimDim: Is This The End For Webex? The entry into the market of a collaboration as a free service vendor.
The Maturing of the CEBP Market An assessment of the CEBP market towards the end of 2007.
Forecasts for 2008: #5 Communications Convergence A start-of-year forecast, discussing the whole area.
The Server Vendors v Cisco: Is This A New Technology War? A technology development that is clearly disruptive at the network infrastructure level.
What is a Presence Server and Why Might I Need One? An introduction to the idea of presence.
Brocade: The Heart and Lungs of the Network Brocade’s technology story is similar to Cisco’s story described above.