Gates Promises 'Magic' Transformation of Telecommunications Through UC

Searching for the 'proposition' part of UC's 'value proposition'

Prior to Bill Gates' appearance on stage this morning, the launch was kicked off by a guitarist playing a special electric model hand-crafted with the Unified Communications logo of cables blowing in the wind (yes, that's literally its logo, replacing the lone orange "U" the company tried before).

Perhaps ominously, though, the guitar began losing its tune midway through the concert, sounding at the end as though a two-year-old tinkered with the tuning knobs. The poor musician fumbled madly through the final notes just seconds before Gates walked on stage.

In fact, as a sales job, Microsoft's launch this morning might have benefitted significantly not only by cutting out the rock concert altogether, but also from about 40 minutes less pontification about how the inevitable evolution of computers in communications was driven by a combination of magic and Moore's Law. In its place, someone might have suggested the company insert a greater emphasis on the product the company is trying to sell.

Once again, Gates perceived his product on a macro-economic scale, and its sale to customers as a kind of sociological observation rather than as a premise for persuasion.

"This is also not just a technological change, but it's a change in the business structure," Gates said at one point, his stream of consciousness running on full blast today, "so that the opportunity for people to come in and do new things is much larger. In the older world, everything came in a kind of vertically-integrated communications stack. The person you bought the server from, the person you bought the directory software from, the person you bought the applications from, the person you bought the hardware device that sat on the desk [from], that was one company. And that model worked just fine because the pieces work together and this was a fairly large market. But it meant that once you had picked one of those PBX vendors, that was it. And in fact, often the business model there was that, even if they didn't make a lot of money on that initial sale, things having to do with, 'Oh, you want to move a phone? Well, now we're talking! Now we can make some money off of you, because you want to move that phone."'

Microsoft itself used to spend $700 every time it wanted to set up a phone in an office, Gates continued. And when he saw that the wiring, setup, and even the directory were bound to the PBX and its carrier, even though people appeared to be content to accept it, he said, he concluded the time was ripe for evolution.

"So how is that going to change from a vertical model?" he went on. "Well, the answer is that we've seen this before. This is just like the computer industry was before the personal computer came along. And the change agents there were Microsoft with the software platform, Intel and the other chip companies that took the magic of doing the hardware piece and brought that down to the chip level - did a fantastic job on that - and so it became a more horizontally-oriented structure. We can take that vertical approach and turn it on its side," Gates demonstrated, repeating the gesture with his arms so everyone understood the 90-degree shift, "and now say, 'Okay, at each of these layers, somebody can specialize."'

In short, Gates perceives Microsoft's evolutionary model for Unified Communications as something that is happening - a trend rather than a product. And in his professorial mode, he explained this trend to his students in a matter-of-fact way, telling us all what we will soon see. Omitted from Gates' rhetoric was any proposition whatsoever to a prospective customer - anything that said, "Here's something we think it will pay you back to purchase." Which is sad, in a way, because the idea is actually good: using the digital communications medium that's already in front of us, to logically manage all forms of messaging through a central source, and distribute messages to the most convenient receptacles - including e-mails, voice mails, voice messages, IM. It was good to see Bill Gates back to his old self, more or less - more animated, more color in his cheeks, smiling more, clearly interested in his subject matter. But Gates neglected to find a way to transfer some of that enthusiasm he's rediscovered to his customer. Since Microsoft is now truly entering an entrenched market, albeit with considerable leverage from Outlook, the company needs to try harder to wedge open that channel with its UC customer. Otherwise, "Cancel" is just one click away.