I went in earlier today for my pledge of allegiance ceremony, the last stage to becoming a US citizen. I tend not to get nostalgic, but I was quite touched by the overall event. There were 118 people from 69 different countries, all called up one by one to receive their certificate. All looked genuinely excited and proud of this milestone in their lives. The low point of the event was a congratulations video from President George Bush, but other than that it was a great event.

The introductory video they showed was about the role of immigrants in US history. I meet folks that claim to be true Americans because they are Nth generation – and I frankly find it quite bigoted and ignorant. If there is one thing that binds all the people in that ceremony and all Americans, it is that we are all immigrants. All of us, except the unfortunate original inhabitants of this land but that is for another day. The diversity and energy of the immigrant community drive the life and economic blood of this country. And as an immigrant myself, I feel at home in this environment. I’ve had some bad experiences with border patrol, who refuse to understand that being called “Mohammed Hussain” does not automatically make me a terrorist. But hopefully the blue passport will reduce those instances!

The look on everyone’s face was one of hope. There were people from both stable well to do parts of the world (I counted six Brits and eight Canadians) but also from troubled parts (Sierra Leone, Kosovo, Afghanistan). But everyone I spoke to was optimistic about what they could do in America. It reminds me of my cousin who is a cab driver in New York. He arrived with nothing in the mid 1990s but has since bought and refurbished a house in Queens that is worth close to a million dollars. He rents out two of the floors and is always looking for entrepreneurial ways to move forward. He has just one son and is passionate about giving him the best education and setting him up for success. I compare that to some immigrants I know in the UK who fall into the welfare trap, where living off the government can actually be more lucrative than taking a chance in life. I sensed that feeling of hope drove a lot of people to move here and become citizens.

Towards the end, the Director read out addresses for voter registration offices and the whole place emptied in a heartbeat. Today is the last day to register in Washington and almost everyone there wanted to have their say. That is actually one of the biggest reasons I became a citizen. Luckily, I still get to keep my British passport and will forever be loyal to Her Majesty. I owe everything to the UK and could never give that up. But the US is my home now, and I want to have a say (however minute) in the future of the country.

In the UK, I was a staunch Conservative. I believe in free market economics, hard work and limited state intervention. But I am also socially very liberal. I don’t much care what two consenting adults do in the bedroom and I believe that women can’t be legally bound to be vessels and have no say over their body. On top of that, I have really struggled to accept the drifting economic divide in the US. For the Top 1% this is an incredible place to make money and build wealth. But for the rest, it is difficult to see a way out of the current stagnation. Many of these people don’t even know how much they are missing out on or even care, but for the country I do think it is essential that there is upward movement for everyone. Otherwise in time there will be increasing social tensions between the haves and have not's, and it will be increasingly difficult to nurture talent from the broad base of the society. In the US, these views and concerns put me well on the left of the political spectrum. It’s a tough choice for me but this year I will be voting for Barack Obama even though I fully expect my taxes to increase by as much as 8%. Some think that’s financially crazy and it may well be. But my choice is based on three big principles.

First, this country is in need of healing. The racial divide from the 1960s and before are still visible everywhere in society; it’s just brushed under the carpet. To his credit, Obama has not played the race card. He is the product of black and white and embodies what America can be when it is at its best. He also does not look to divide the country. I hated the way Bush did that, and McCain’s slogan inherently does this. “Country First” tells anyone that disagrees with his policies that they are un-American when disagreeing and discussing are the hallmarks that make this country great. Just because you are in the military doesn’t make you any more patriotic than the next person. I could argue Bill Gates has done more for America than any marine, just in his own way. It’s time to table the divisive social discussions around homosexuality and abortion and solve the other problems we have. Bush made many of these issues black and white, making a pariah of anyone that challenged the conventional wisdom. Moving forward as one country needs us to unite and energize everyone.

Second, I want a competent person in power. Since when did “elitism” become a bad thing? We want our sports stars to be elite athletes, we want our marines to be elite fighting forces and we want our leaders to be the smartest people we can find. Absolutely connecting to the public and knowing how to build support are critical roles in any president, but not at the expense of informed judgment on complex issues. I was shocked when American’s voted for George Bush, a bumbling buffoon whose admission into the Harvard Business School was considered by the last dean to be “inevitable charity”. His point was that thanks to family connections, George Bush would rise to the top, but that not educating him would make a bad situation worse for society! McCain was an heir of a military dynasty and married into money. His instincts on free trade and market principles are often bang on, but I still don’t see any ability to analyze and understand hard problems. The world is a complex place and we need competent people that can understand it, not sound bite politicians shooting from the hip.       

And finally, I do think it’s time to shift the wealth distribution engine in America. When McCain says he wants the citizens to take care of their wealth, he fails to point out that almost of that new wealth has been shifting north to the rich. Although I started from humble roots, in recent years that has been great for me. But for a sustainable society, we need a middle class that is defined by stability and upward mobility. Without it, the markets for goods we want these people to buy starts drying up and the social tensions prevalent in many third world countries may become common in the US. I hope Obama balances this. I think the investment incentives the rich have powers much in this country, and the limited government assistance forces a self help mentality that serves America well. But, without some investment in the foundational things like education and health, the middle class loses the stability it seeks and the country loses the engine of prosperity for the future.  

Obama has many issues he needs to come to terms with. He does need to grow a backbone and go against the tide every now and then. He has pandered too much to his parties mainstream to date. As President, he will need to stand up to both world leaders and to his own party (which may have filibuster proof majority) to make his vision come alive. He is dangerously anti free market, which in this economy is a very populist tone. I just hope he uses his intellect to strike a balance rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater. But when all is told, I would have him over McCain-Palin any day. I find it baffling when people say they like Palin because “she is like us”. That may be, but all of us are not qualified to be President. And while experience does help McCain, it also adds generational baggage this country could do without.

So, a very exciting day for me. I became a citizen and will get to vote for change in a country I have come to love and call home.

Interesting post about the foundational elements of unified communications by Vanessa Alvarez. I live through a lot of these discussions every day where folks seem to mix the VOIP with Unified Communications.

 

As I have said several times in this blog, I think there are many elements that could claim to be the required foundation of unified communications. Most people now tend to agree presence is one of them. If you look at total traffic and communications volume, one could argue that email is the other one. To some organizations not so dependent on knowledge and information workers, maybe voice is more important than email. But all of this is really moot for two reasons.

 

First, unified communications means being able to tie together the most relevant communications modes in a seamless experience .... hence the word unified. Voice, email, conferencing, instant messaging ..... these are all critical elements. The end goal has all of these things wherever you start from.

 

Second, nothing is really a pre-requisite unless the vendor involved makes it so because of their solution architecture. For example, some vendors may need you to deploy certain configurations on your network (in cases sold by the same vendor for twice the total cost of the rest of the UC solution) to make their UC solution possible. This then makes the network implementation, often accompanied by VOIP, a pre-requisite. It doesn't have to be that way.

 

I do believe that presence (and a common contact list, in our case Active Directory) is a pre-requisite. At least for now. One day, we may move to a world where presence sits in the cloud and can be federated across boundaries. At that stage, you may not even need that to begin with. For now, no one has figured out to do that.

Today, we announced Office Communications Server 2007 R2 at VoiceCon Amsterdam. I won't go into all the details, for more information, check out the Press Release and Video from Stephen Elop.

 

This is an exciting release for us, almost one year to the day since the unified communications launch in October 2007, where Bill Gates and Jeff Raikes keynoted and predicted major transformation in the communications industry. They predicted that software would be a key driver of innovation in communications, that unified communications would take precedence over silos of communications technologies, and that the industry would undergo a fundamental 90 degree shift from vertically integrated to horizontal structured ecosystems.

 

Since then, much of the talk in the industry is about software powering communications; in fact, many former hardware players are acquiring or setting up software divisions. For the first time in our surveys, we are seeing unified communications taking over VOIP as an business investment priority, because enterprises realize that VOIP is only one part of the unified communications solution and that investing in silos makes the end goal much harder to realize down the road. This still has not caught on for many people, who will put the word "unified" in front of everything as if that really makes it unified. Our belief is that you need a single infrastructure and most importantly a single user experience across the UC workloads for it to be really unified, but at least the transformation is headed in the right direction. And finally, there is an industry transformation under way with new players one would not expect to be involved in communications entering, and many others whose ownership and potential mandate has been reset. These are indeed exciting times to be in communications.

 

Meanwhile, OCS has continued to grow tremendously. We won some six industry awards for "Innovation of the Year" or "VOIP Product of the Year". Analysts tell us that they cannot have a conversation with a large customer about voice without Microsoft coming up. Several of our customers are on their way to 100,000+ users on IM and Presence, and customers like Shell International are leapfrogging an entire generation of IP-PBX technology to move straight to unified communications with OCS; Shell is already with 5,000 users on OCS voice. We have several thousand partners trained on OCS and launched new certifications on UC, OCS and Voice specialization. Internally at Microsoft, tens of thousands of people are using Communicator, the USB peripherals, Tanjay, Live Meeting and Roundtable on a daily basis - Microsoft employees are a tough crowd, but already people just take these capabilities for granted. And business is great too, we are doubling our business year on year!

 

This new release is a major milestone for us as it brings new voice capabilities that take us much closer to full enterprise voice capability, and in particular, make OCS a pretty complete solution for mobile and remote workers. Many of our customers actually start deploying OCS voice to these workers first, taking a load off their existing PBXs and foregoing the need to upgrade or buy new infrastructure. There are also major advances in desktop collaboration and audio conferencing. OCS now offers audio (including PSTN dial in bridges), video and web conferencing in a single solution. One feature I am very excited about for example is desktop sharing, which allows users to share their desktop to internal or external participants with just one click rather than setting up a full web conferencing session. And finally, we are introducing new tools and APIs for developers to build communications enabled applications. This is something we are adopting internally at Microsoft, for example, our attendant console in this release was built using our development SDK and APIs. Any ISV could easily a similar application to suit their needs.

 

The future for us is looking great! As the economy continues to sour, our message is that customers can save money by investing in software and forego expensive capital expenditure projects. Our roadmap is focused on delivering true unified communications, with more than just a full voice solution. And the team and leadership are in place raring to go.

 

We will be launching the product officially on February 3rd 2009 in a Virtual Event featuring Stephen Elop. You can find out more and register from the new Office Communications Server website at www.microsoft.com/communicationsserver. Please do join us as we showcase our vision, our product, our customers and partners.