By Alex Scroxton

10 October 2008

There was only one game in town at IP’07, the UK’s annual IP and convergence event, and that was the launch of Microsoft’s Office Communications Server and the promise of unified communications (UC).

This year, and with attendance visibly up on 2007, it was harder to pin down the big theme in the convergence world, but the worsening economy has certainly become a factor, as more users begin to investigate how a properly managed network can slash their costs significantly.

“One client reduced his bandwidth costs by 37% and saved over £2m,” says Nigel Pink, newly appointed UK vice-president and general manager at network optimisation outfit Ipanema Technologies.

“Today’s events are extraordinary, and now is a wonderful time to try to understand what your network resources are actually doing. For example, we find critical applications take up a very small amount of bandwidth, so by defining service level agreements for non-critical applications you can make a significant saving,” he says.

Putting aside the threat of recession, the UC story is still playing a huge part in driving the convergence industry, and making UC products easier to control and manage will become very important in the coming months, according to ShoreTel EMEA managing director Mark Swendsen.

ShoreTel used the show to launch version 8.1 of its global product set, a long-awaited release that incorporates global support for its desktop client and new VPN-enabled phones and switches.

Philip Swainson, technical manager at network monitoring and traffic analysis specialist Kedron, which has just signed up to distribute products from network services vendor Infosim, believes it is increasingly important for networking tools to adapt to the businesses into which they are placed rather than operating to a vendor-mandated rulebook.

Mitel UK sales director Enda Kenneally talks up the importance of choice and interoperability in today’s network. “We have never dictated what data infrastructure our solutions have to sit on; we work as well on Cisco as HP, or Sun, or whoever.”

Mitel, which makes about 80% of its EMEA sales in the UK according to Kenneally, is currently pushing a channel-centric angle, having recently unveiled a new financing programme, a sales training unit and various other marketing initiatives.

Video is cool

It is often said that videoconferencing and telepresence solutions form a key part of the UC story, but it is also widely acknowledged that adoption has been very slow. As ShoreTel’s Mark Swendsen points out, videoconferencing solutions were being demonstrated at the 1964 New York World’s Fair.
Forty-four years on, and, video is now sneaking in through the back door, according to Swendsen.

“It is becoming a very juicy application. Take-up remains low; most companies that buy ShoreTel think video is cool but nobody will use it. However, we are finding that in these installations, up to 85% of people are using it,” Swendsen says.

Polycom UK and Ireland vice-president Paul Louden points to several factors driving adoption and highlights opportunities for comms dealers. “The advent of high-definition services and the softening of the economy have become key drivers to the extent that high-end immersive telepresence solutions will now get the attention of the board of directors instead of the comms room guys,” he says.

Louden says that through partnerships with Westcon and Avaya, Polycom is busily expanding its convergence channel.

“Our message to partners is that if they have [previously] taken an opportunistic approach to selling video, now is the time to make it core,” he adds.

Virtualisation to hit the network soon

Box textThe converging worlds of networking, storage and security were clearly evident as IP’08 was co-located with the UK’s first ever virtualisation exhibition, VM’08.

Speaking as boss Steve Ballmer launched the Hyper-V Server 2008 at a separate reseller event, Microsoft virtualisation director Zane Adam said that server virtualisation and networking would not come together per se, but there was a powerful case for making the two pieces work seamlessly as it would bring down costs for users.

Niall McGrane, director of security and virtualisation at Magirus, which has just signed an agreement to distribute Stonesoft security products for VMware environments, said the crossover was coming.
“Today we are talking server consolidation, but the second stage of virtualisation is the network, and in a year I think it will be the norm,” he said.

Stonesoft marketing vice-president Klaus Majewski theorised, “IP demand fluctuates, so if you have high demand you can bring in more virtualised servers, maybe shut down the EU servers overnight and fire up the US ones at peak times to bring down latency. That kind of flexibility will be important in the future.”