Hey Cisco, this is an open letter to you.
With today's announcment that with the release of the new Xbox tens of millions of home users are about to get what is effectively a Lync client in their living rooms, I wondered what your opinions and strategies around that are.
We see, time and time again, users taking what they use in the home and forcing it in the workplace. We've seen it with tablets, we've seen it with Windows, we've seen it with mobiles. We see it all the damn time. Hell, there's a whole new market of BYOD for just that task now.
I see Microsoft, day in, day out, getting the jump on their competitors and squeezing their way in through the consumer market, not because they have a great product, but because their strategy is so much more aggressive and smart than everyone elses. I strongly believe that Jabber IS the better product, BUT Linux is better than windows, Betamax was better than VHS, Novell was better than AD. And yet the market lies down and dooms users to a mediochre experience every time by allowing Microsoft to push their products into the workplace via the living room with no competition.
So how about it. Are you going to legally challenge this 'walled-garden' Microsoft are creating with Skype before it becomes an unwinable situation? How about some kind of partnership with Samsung et. al for Jabber in the living room? Because I'm here to tell you, once service and retail companies wake up and start dealing with their customers through Skype (and the will do once it becomes easy enough, the Xbox makes it that way), no-one's going to give a damn how good Jabber is. You can take the high-road of standards and better quality and blah blah blah, but businesses will go the easiest, least risky route, which is Microsoft. Yeah you might eventually get some kind of half-hearted poorly considered opening of the Skype environment, but by then it will be too late and they'll already have the death grip, much like in the OS market.
I really want to see Jabber become a defacto standard. UCM is definitely the best platform out there right now, and I really want to see the better product in my opinion win this time! You've gotta offer more. like Whatsapp to SMS, like Kinect to Move, like Netflix to Blockbuster. This can be won, but you're going to have to fight for it Mr Chambers!
signed
a concerned Cisco enthusiast.
p.s. I don't actually expect a reply, and not only because no-one actually uses communities, let's face it.
