In speaking to a number of startup vendors in the collaboration space, often my first question to them is "How does your product integrate with Microsoft or IBM Lotus office communications applications?" (E.g. Outlook, SameTime, LCS, etc.) Often the response is "We include our own messaging client or capability." IMHO, this makes the product a non-starter for the enterprise market.

In conducting our research for an upcoming benchmark on enterprise collaboration, mobility and convergence, it has become quite obvious that the vast majority of enterprises are aligning themselves with strategic collaboration vendors, and these are almost always either IBM or Microsoft. While there is a considerable amount of interest in open source and third-party applications, the fact of the matter is that any vendor wishing to get into the enterprise collaboration market will have to have a ________ strategy. (Insert "Microsoft" or "IBM Lotus" in the blank.)

In effect, the Microsoft and Lotus application suites have become operating systems for collaboration, much like Windows or Linux/Unix are operating systems for PC applications.