The deal is an important one for Siemens Enterprise Communications, as the division is now called after last year’s merger of the German group’s carrier networking business with Nokia to become Nokia Siemens Networks, with the Finns in the driving seat.
At the time of that announcement, the Munich-based conglomerate said it was also in the market for a partner/buyer for the other half of the business, but so far nothing has transpired. Instead, Siemens Enterprise Comms is repositioning from the role of PBX and deskphone vendor to that of a developer of PBX-independent server software for unified comms (OpenScape) and fixed-mobile convergence (MobileConnect), as well as a vendor of WLAN infrastructure (from its acquisition of Chantry).
It is the heterogeneity of OpenScape that attracted IBM as it evolves the strategy enunciated at the Lotusphere event earlier this year by Bruce Morse, its VP of unified comms and collaboration and which was referred to at VoiceCon yesterday as Sametime for Unified Telephony, though that’s still something of a working title.
Since IBM is not in the PBX business, it could partner with a vendor for a joint Sametime-and-IP PBX offering, and it already has a relationship in place with Cisco. However, there is also the issue of heterogeneous PBX environments, or the scenario where the customer is still amortizing an existing PBX and doesn’t want to rip and replace in the name of implementing a Sametime-based unified comms infrastructure. It is in situations such as these that IBM Global Services will now be able to offer Sametime with the elements of OpenScape that enable a move into unified comms without a change of PBX.
IBM chose Siemens OpenScape technology because of its interoperability with multiple PBX systems, said Morse. Our companies share the goal of developing extensible unified communications solutions that are based on open standards and integrate seamlessly into business processes.
Tim Steel, Siemens Enterprise Comms SVP of global alliances, said that both IBM’s software offerings and OpenScape are based on service-oriented architectures. He said this not only makes it easier for Big Blue to integrate elements of OpenScape into Sametime, but should stand them in good stead when it comes to integration with back-end systems, provided the customer has also made the move to SOA.
This is seen by many industry players as the next phase of unified comms, beyond the streamlining of interaction among geographically disperse knowledge workers. Avaya has done most work evangelizing on the subject, which it refers to as Comms-Enabled Business Processes. It is all about automating voice and other communications media in business workflows so that, for example, adverse weather conditions in the American Midwest could trigger automatic voice, email, and SMS notification to travelers that certain airports and closed and they will need to catch their flights elsewhere.
Steel said the deal with IBM opens up to Siemens a market of 125 million Lotus users who are all actual or potential Sametime customers. He could not give specifics of the financial arrangement with IBM, but sources at Siemens indicated that there is an element of up-front payment for the OEM agreement and some ongoing license revenue from each deal IBM cuts for Sametime Unified Telephony deployments.
Our View
No one stepped up to acquire Siemens Enterprise Comms when Nokia took over the carrier networking part of the business. However, Siemens now has this OEM deal in place with IBM, making it the enabler of heterogeneous unified comms for Lotus Sametime. This deal has similarities with the one announced in March with Nokia where the Finnish vendor now markets MobileConnect as part of a PBX-independent FMC offering alongside its Eseries business smart phones.
One wonders whether Enterprise Comms will continue as a standalone business, or if it builds momentum with the IBM and Nokia alliances and potentially more relationships of this kind, it will become a more attractive acquisition target for a company with ambitions in unified comms and/or FMC.
