My only complaint about Unified Messenger is that they have missed their GA, and have offered no information as to when it might be expected. 6 months is a lifetime in technology. Every vm provider has 6 months to catchup with Octel. Octel, meanwhile gets no market share advantage because they are not shipping product.
If anybody thinks that UM will be Octel's new big prooduct, think again. UM will only support 24 ports per box, and does not appear to be very scalable. Because of this, it will only be competitive in the low-end market. The competitive analysis focused on ease-of-use, and simplified administration. While these are important, it takes more than ease-of-use to sell a VM into major accounts.
Octel's primary revenue will come from Sierra and Overture. Sierra is nearly 8 years old, runs on 80386 platform, with proprietary OS. It is a dead end product with no long-term growth potential. Overture was acquired in the VMX acquisition. Which means it has been nearly 8 years since Octel has released a truly new and innovative product. UM represents new and innovative, but it is not shipping, and it will not generate sufficient revenues or market share to keep Octel on top.
Out of curiosity, I just went to Octel's home page, and did a search on "IMA". The most recent press release for IMA was 1995. Two years ago! I suspect that a lot of resources have been invested in IMA, and judging from the lack of press, I'd further guess that IMA is failing to live up to expectations. In short, I'd say the product is in trouble. Not to mention that since 1995, the entire mesaging business has changed. Octel has never been a proponent of open standards, and I doubt that IMA was a standards-based product. In fact, the only "IMA" press release, does not contain the word "Internet". |
