Licenses Push Unified Communications Marketing

Unified communications represents a significant growth opportunity for Microsoft in its 2008 fiscal year. The company is employing an unusual lever to build its customer based for Unified Communications: in addition to its usual marketing efforts, it is encouraging enterprise customers to upgrade to a new suite of Client Access Licenses (CALs) that offer the necessary licenses at lower cost. However, it faces some challenges, such as existing Voice over IP (VoIP) users for whom switching to the Microsoft stack will be costly, and the small number of partners capable of implementing complex voice products.

Microsoft’s Unified Communications Offering

Microsoft positions unified communications as an “adjacent” market opportunity—beyond the experimental stage, but not a core product. It vaults the company into new territory using existing core products as a base. Microsoft’s unified communications technologies include Exchange and Communications Server, which can be supplemented by SharePoint Server and Microsoft’s Live Meeting service. When fully deployed, the unified communications stack offers the following major features: