Most products go through a life cycle – initial interest and early adopters, mass consumption and ultimately a mature and potentially saturated market.  Against this backdrop in software, ISVs releases new versions to encourage new users to adopt the technology and later in the cycle, to prevent them from switching to other competitors or new technologies and so reduce the churn.  Quite simplistic but its sets the scene :)

What’s interesting about our current Online Services portfolio is that whilst they represent some of our core communications offerings, the individual elements represents products at different stages in the cycle.

If you were trying to get a customer’s interest, an opening line of “I’d like 15 minutes of your time to talk about this revolutionary concept called email” today isn’t going to get you very far.  Email has been a mainstay of corporate communications for at least 12 – 15 years in the UK.  The conversation is not likely to be about why email, more about why use Microsoft software for email and in turn about why Online Services is great delivery choice.  With Exchange 2010 on the way, its a good time to ride the wave of interest.  So, because email adoption is mature, people don’t need to be sold on the principle of email, its benefits are well understood.

I don’t however think that’s the case for Instant messaging.  Its a technology which though used in businesses, has a long way to go before its as widely adopted across all business segments in the way email is.  So I think with Office Communications Online (“OCO”) it IS possible to have the call that starts “I’d like 15 minutes of your time to talk about corporate Instant Messaging and how you are using it in your business today?”

I’d say that the reasons why they might say yes to this offer are:

- Instant messaging is widely used by consumers, so there’s already some familiarity

- Like many products before it, if IT hasn’t offer it widely, its likely there are pockets of usage based on these consumer offerings, unless desktops are locked down

- This creates a number of headaches for IT including multiple clients to manage, lack of auditing of usage, impact of network traffic with voice or large file distribution to name but a few

Aside from the benefits of getting OCO as a managed services, it also:

- Compliments other Online Services offerings like Live Meeting and as such provides an opportunity to bundle with / upsell from other offerings. Don’t forget the other bundles too example Microsoft Webcams and Headsets (more information to be found here ).  I’ll do a separate blog on the Attach opportunity later in the year.

- Seamlessly integrates presence into other Online Services like SharePoint Online and Microsoft Office (from 2007, SP1 onwards)

- At time of writing, the customer will also receive one licensed copy of Office Communicator 2007 R2 at no cost with each subscription license to Office Communications Online, for use exclusively with OCO.  For the full terms of this offer and for details, have a look at the Service description here

For those who haven’t seen the Office Communicator client, it usually gets a great reaction when demonstrated and with features like presence, its quick to see its benefits at the product level too.  I certainly leave significantly fewer voicemails and consequently get questions answered much quicker than I used to!  With voice and video capability too, there are other compelling TCO arguments. Communicator is my main tool for voicecalls today,  reducing my mobile and fixed line costs for example.  I also work from home from time to time and I do feel more in touch with Communication on the desktop – a good angle when talking about flexible working. Of course, there are some restrictions v. Office Communications Server onpremise, but I think there is a lot in the service today to get customers interested…and all for under £2/month.

In conclusion, you may find a discussion about instant messaging and OCO a path into a business that provides less initial resistance that some of the more established routes.  Certainly to me, it feels like the early days of email when adoption was not uniform and there were lots of opportunities to talk about greenfield sites and company wide deployment plans.  I hope in 10 years from now looking back we’ll think, was it really not on all desktops!