For the last several years at VoiceCon, we’ve taken it for granted that interest in mobility will continue its strong growth. And yet, it’s equally clear that people are driving less–people are cutting down on energy use. The operative word, going forward, may not be mobility, but rather flexibility. And if that’s the case, the “productivity”-based arguments for Unified Communications may look less like a nice-to-have, and more like table stakes.

a Silver Lake-Tandberg deal–assuming Avaya played into the scenario–would really set Avaya apart and would arguably make Avaya the most credible alternative to Cisco for enterprise communications. It’s getting harder and harder to escape the conclusion that video is moving from nice-to-have/status symbol, to critical element of a communications solution going forward. Of course, video means lots of different things: Desktop, room, telepresence. All but desktop seem like a pretty good bet to take off for business purposes

Last week, Jim Burton wrote a piece entitled, “UC: It’s Not About Buying a New IP-PBX.” I agree with Jim, which is usually the smart thing to do, but at least to me–Jim may disagree–his mantra doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t buy a new IP-PBX. It’s just that the IP-PBX is not synonymous with Unified Communications.

Don Brown, Interactive Intelligence’s chairman, president and CEO, told me he wants to compete against the likes of BEA and Ultimus in providing programming tools that automate business processes, instead of just communications-enabling those processes. In Brown’s view of things, communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) “undershoots the potential” of the cluster of technologies that are typically deployed first in the contact center, which is the marketplace where Interactive Intelligence has its historic strength.