Webcast held on Nov. 18, 2008. One hour.

Many organizations are interested in moving away from a world of separate systems for email, instant messaging, telephony, etc. Their vision is of integrated, or unified, communications technologies. The most-discussed unified communications offering is from Microsoft; here the major product components are Exchange, Outlook, Active Directory, Office Communications Server, and the Office Communicator client. These work alongside a third-party phone switch or PBX (a private branch exchange).

In this webcast, Ferris Research analyst Richi Jennings and Unison Technologies CMO Rurik Bradbury discuss the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Microsoft’s approach to unified communications. You learn how to model and estimate unified communications costs in your own environment. The event concludes with a Q&A session.

Webcast 794.

Important Questions Addressed by This Webcast Include:

• What is unified communications?
• How do you calculate the TCO of Microsoft-based unified communications?
• What are the main cost components?
• How can you reduce the cost of Microsoft-based unified communications?
• How do these costs differ from the costs of other, competing technologies?

Speakers

• Richi Jennings, analyst, Ferris Research. The practice leader for spam and boundary services, Richi has been involved with messaging and collaboration technologies since 1985. His main areas of focus are Linux, security, spam, viruses and other malware, large-scale enterprise deployments, TCO, and wireless.
• Rurik Bradbury, CMO, Unison Technologies. Rurik heads the marketing team at Unison Technologies, a leader in unified communications software. Before that, he was Vice President of Marketing at Intermedia, the world’s largest Microsoft Exchange hosting provider.

Who Is This Webcast Suitable For?

This webcast is suitable for IT planners, vendor management staff, and investors.

Unified communications—the integration of email, instant messaging, presence, conferencing, voicemail, intelligent call routing, and other telephony functions—is becoming a common option for organizations seeking a more cost-effective and operationally efficient communications infrastructure. A Microsoft Exchange/Outlook user moves to unified communications, or UC, by adding the Microsoft Office Communications Server product and its associated Microsoft Office Communicator client product.

This report looks at the total cost of ownership (TCO) of Microsoft-based UC. As the report shows, the TCO of Microsoft UC and telephony benefits from economies of scale. It is much easier for a large organization to justify the technology than a smaller organization.

The report also includes an interview with Igor Balk, the CTO of Unison Technologies, on his company’s UC alternative.

In addition to the report, we provide a spreadsheet to help you model your organization’s TCO.

Report 795. 15 pages.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary
Microsoft’s Approach to UC and Telephony
     Exchange, Active Directory, and Outlook
     Telephony Integration
     IM and Presence
Main Cost Components of Microsoft UC TCO Model
     Software
     Hardware
     People
     Power and Cooling
     Additional Costs, not Included
Conclusions
     Small Organization: 50 Users
     Medium Organization: 500 Users
     Large Organization: 5,000 Users
     UC Is Much Less Expensive for Larger Organizations
Unison Interview
Unison’s UC Technology