Interesting piece up by Rob Enderle over at IT Business Edge titled "Battle for the Corporate Phone." Enderle looks at PBX convergence in the corporate market and gives some perspective on where it's been and where it might be heading considering who the major players are (apart, of course, from the omnipresent legacy PBX vendors hovering in the background).

Can't say I have given it enough consideration to comment yet, really, but I've been spending a fair amount of time looking at Microsoft's new small business VOIP solution so it has been on my mind. It's funny, Enderle mentions one of Microsoft's first phone endeavors (called, if I recall correctly, simply "Phone" in that infuriating way they have), a consumer oriented "smart" phone based on a Windows 95 host PC. He calls it "...probably the worst telephone I'd ever seen in my life" which I found amusing because I had a friend on that team at the time and had an opportunity to reminisce about it recently as I attempted to grill him about the new Microsoft phone solution. He didn't know anything about it-not unusual at Microsoft, since he's not on that team now-not a good sign, nonetheless. Especially since the team he is on is one of the ones you might expect would be "converging" as Enderle puts it.

At any rate, we had a good chuckle over the hapless Phone and I couldn't help but wonder, based on that experience, if the new Response Point system might not be headed for the same fate. Many of the same factors are present; sure, it sounds cool, but what's next? Microsoft hasn't been able to say much, and that may be a sign it hasn't been thought sufficiently through. The Unified Communications system, on the other hand, seems to have some weight behind it (and more importantly, were projects my friend had been familiarized with).

As long as the gasping old corporate PBX system falls under the CIO's purview, you should probably head over and see what Rob has to say about it and what your options may be in the near future.