This week is the annual Enterprise Connect (formerly VoiceCon) conference in Orlando, FL.  One of the many panels I’m on and moderating at the conference is titled “UC? Mobility? FMC? BYOD? SIP Trunking? Video? WebRTC? It’s time to take control.”

The theme of taking control of the UC environment is a good one as it’s my belief that Unified Communications is getting more and more complex as the vendor community expands the definition and functionality of UC. 

At one time, telephony was simple: a PBX, a phone and cable.  Connect them up and you’ve got voice.  Troubleshooting meant checking the phone, cable or PBX.  However, that legacy solution was as inflexible as it was simple. 

Remember this blog post?

It’s my now infamous “Bell tolls for thee” blog that I authored just after VMworld last year. This was the blog for which I was so soundly flogged by the VMware community in the comments section, and even received a few nasty emails. (By the way, I do want to thank all of the people who comment on my blogs. Whether you agree or disagree with me, it’s always good to have the feedback. 

- BACKGROUND: VMware, the bell tolls for thee, and Microsoft is ringing it

Well, it appears the bell has indeed rung for VMware. Late last month, VMware held its most recent quarterly call to go over financial numbers, and all appeared well. After announcing a record December quarter and great earnings, VMware management lowered the boom. The outlook for the current quarter and the current year were both substantially lower than consensus estimates, marking several consecutive years of slowing revenue growth. 

Well, it’s hard to believe but the year is almost up and there are only a mere couple of weeks until we ring in the New Year. So that makes it prediction time for us industry analysts and I’d like to share mine with you. So, drum roll please…

• 2013 will not be the year of Software Defined Networks. The media hype around SDNs is at an all-time high. However, contrary to some of the predictions I’ve seen, 2013 will not be the year of the SDN as most enterprise network managers are trying to figure out what exactly SDNs are and how they can leverage them. The notion that a technology with such a big architectural difference from the status quo could have rapid uptake is as ridiculous as thinking that Mark Sanchez might actually make a good QB one day. I predict that 2013 will be the year of SDN research, and we’ll start to see some best practices developed and some case studies created.
• The Application Delivery Controller (ADC) will become part of SDN architecture. I’ve never really liked the term “software” defined networks because software shouldn’t define anything. Software can reconfigure the network, but applications should define it. If that’s the case, what network device has the most knowledge of applications? The ADC does and that’s why the ADC either needs to pass along application information to the controller or actually take on controller functionality. Either way, we’ll see market leader F5 and its band of competitors become relevant to SDNs.
  [keep reading...]

Earlier this week Cisco and Citrix made some noise when they announced an expanded partnership. The partnership brings together the market leader in networking and data center infrastructure and combines it with the market leader in desktop virtualization. The expanded partnership should be a “win-win-win” for both organizations and their customers, as the two companies can bring their respective strengths together to deliver greater functionality through joint development. Some partnerships are nothing more than PowerPoint integration, but this one should have some teeth. As much as I like this partnership, I’m a firm believer that Cisco should pony up the cash, stocks or whatever else it needs and actually buy Citrix.

I’ve covered Cisco for many years and I’ve long felt that Citrix would be a great acquisition for the company. Cisco has stated through the years it didn’t want to be an application vendor (although UC manager and wants to deliver infrastructure). Citrix is infrastructure, it’s just application infrastructure. Given the current trends of cloud computing, BYOD and device evolution, Citrix would certainly command a hefty premium over its current $12 billion market cap, but I still think it would be worth it. My personal belief is that if an acquisition is a good acquisition, you can’t really pay too much. For example, if Cisco had paid 10x what it did for Selsius, would anyone really care now? After all, that technology purchase eventually made Cisco the market leader in VoIP. Conversely, if an acquisition is a bad one, then you can’t pay too little. There are many examples of this so I won’t make anyone look bad by mentioning one.

VMworld is about a month behind us now and I’ve had a little more time to noodle on the joint survey I did with virtualization management vendor Xangati. There was a tremendous amount of energy at VMworld and the show floor was one of the biggest and busiest I’ve seen in a long time. This might give one the impression that the VMware franchise is impenetrable, but the survey shows differently.

Before I go through some of the data, remember the survey was answered by current VMware customers, so the data is likely to be skewed pro-VMware, which makes the data even more surprising. VMware has had a virtual (pun intended) monopoly on the market, but there does seem to be some chinks in the armor that could be exploited by another solution provider.