So I couldn’t help myself. Nick Jones of Gartner has just released a small polemic entitled “Is UC the biggest scam since Ponzi?” I had to repsond, while the UC industry is by no means perfect I see organisations who successfully implement UC on a daily basis and they gain significant business value on a multi billion global scale. How can they be involved in a Ponzi scheme. My response to Nick is below, as is the link to the original article.
Hi Nick
I can certainly agree with you on three areas:
1 – consumer software is currently innovating faster than enterprise software
2 – The likes of MS and Cisco are attempting to repeat age old practises of driving customers into a one way alley
3 – Vendors who use business cases based on micro productivity as a primary means of justification for IT implementation should be viewed with scorn
Such complaints are not specific to UC, they happen across the entire IT landscape. You’d have a slightly stronger case if you broadened the title to “Is IT the largest scam since a Ponzi scheme”
But your specific attack on UC falls down on at least two areas. Firstly you have not defined UC. How can you attack something with which you fail to define?
Secondly are you really so confident in your assumption that you can make an unassailable case? I can certainly find plenty of organisations who have implemented UC badly and are likely to contribute to your case.
However I also know of large global organisations who have implemented UC successfully and has been measured by specific business led objectives and outcomes. Marty rightly points out that a successful UC implementation can lead to significant competitive advantage, is it therefore no wonder that organisations who are successfully implementing UC keep their competitive success story relatively quiet? I want my IT department to successfully implement UC and I don’t want them telling everyone in the world how they are doing it.
Interestingly in my experience I find organisations which tend to fail at implementing UC share similar characteristics. Often they follow the IT herd mentality (so they are getting very excited over cloud at the moment) and more often than not they listen and follow overly generic advice from analysts who have limited experience in a subject matter.
More than happy to discuss further if you would like…perhaps you could let us know who is leading the case for the defence?
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Steve Blood and Jeff Mann will be arguing against Nick Jones, and as we have far more evidence of success than he has of failure, we are very confident of convincing the audience that while Nick has some valid arguments, his overall position is misguided…which is why we don't allow him to advise clients on unified communications
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Thanks Steve for the clarification. Completely agree that there are plenty of challenges to a successful UC implementation but there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a UC project procured and delivered correctly which is aligned closely to the business strategy. Such projects allow the business to use UC technology to create value in so many different ways it is impossible to predict the full breadth of use cases before implementation.