Attendance was especially strong in the Unified Communications sessions, which certainly isn’t new at VoiceCon, but it has led Fred Knight and I to finally conclude that UC is the core of the conference, not just a technology overlay on the voice over IP that dominated a few years ago. I don’t think anyone thinks about deploying an IP-PBX anymore without asking themselves, “Then what?” Not everyone has an answer yet, but knowing that there needs to be an answer may be what will motivate people to keep coming to VoiceCon. At least that’s what Fred and I are going to shoot for.

Judging by the breakdown in morning tutorial attendance, the big concerns among our attendees haven’t changed: People gravitated to Brent Kelly’s updated session comparing Microsoft OCS 2007 with IBM Lotus Sametime; they also went for David Bryan’s SIP Tutorial, which once again got great reviews; and our new tutorial, with Nemertes Research examining business cases for IP telephony and Unified Communications, was another strong draw.

I blogged briefly on Johan Krebbers’ keynote address at last week’s VoiceCon Amsterdam; I focused on the issue of information sharing and collaboration at Royal Dutch Shell, but I want to revisit some of the core communications issues. The big headline out of the speech was Krebbers’ assertion that at Shell, voice is no more important than the other peer-to-peer real-time media. In his talk, Krebbers elaborated, saying that within Shell today, if you travel, you’re encouraged to use a softphone to save on international dialing; the expectation is that you’ll become comfortable enough with the softphone that you’ll be willing to use it when you’re in the office as well.

Any enterprise that goes with a cellular service as its primary communications strategy for some or all of its users must come to grips with the reality that wireless costs are exploding in the enterprise. At VoiceCon San Francisco next month, two great consultants, Steve Leaden and Robert Harris, will be running a session on “Managing Your Cellular Spend.”

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.