Microsoft, Nortel’s branch device has potential, but it’s not the first

Branch Office Best Practices Newsletter, By Robin Gareiss, Network World, 1/23/07

The CEOs of Microsoft and Nortel last week provided a further glimpse into some of the fruits of their partnership during a press conference in New York. One of the products they promised was a branch office appliance that combines VoIP and unified communications capabilities.

Few details were available about this new product, presumably because it’s not scheduled to be available for nearly a year (4th quarter 2007). The so-called unified communications (UC) Integrated Branch appliance will combine VoIP, instant messaging, and presence on Nortel hardware.

At first glance, the idea of combining Microsoft UC applications onto a branch office appliance is a good one. But the idea of consolidated branch appliances that combine all sorts of functions isn’t a new one.

What I see developing in the all-in-one branch device market is too much segmentation. The goal of these products is to consolidate the number of products in the branch. On average, companies are managing seven networking devices at each branch, and the majority of IT executives recently benchmarked say they want to reduce that number.

They want to combine switching/routing, security, storage, wide-area file services (WAFS), network optimization, and VoIP.

Nortel has devices that include switching/routing and security, and separately switching/routing and WAFS. Now it will have yet another appliance with Microsoft that combines VoIP and UC. Avaya and Juniper are set to release a branch office product that combines switching and VoIP, and Cisco’s integrated services router product line offers various combinations of functions. Other vendors, such as Adtran and Citrix, also are offering integrated branch office products.

What companies want from vendors is a key-enabled appliance that incorporates all or many of these functions in a single device. They could buy the features they want and activate them with software keys.

We’re also seeing some trending to indicate that companies want to offload more of these functions to managed service providers (MSP). Carriers would manage the branch office devices (either owned by the carrier or the customer). But the would buy the applications, such as IP-enabled audioconferencing, VoIP, IM, or presence, from a hosted service from carriers (remember the old ASP model?). This way, they do not need to manage applications for each branch location, and they would have a fixed, per-user price, making budgeting easier.

All of the vendors need to take a step back, and further evaluate what customers really want from these all-in-one branch-office appliances, what they’re willing to spend, and what prompts them to buy them. It’s not only the cost of the device, but the reduced operational cost and space requirements. By making these appliances modular and priced according to the function required (with the ability to add or delete functions as time goes on), the customer response will be quite favorable.