VoiceCon ... er ... UCONN

I’m down in Orlando for VoiceCon and I have to say, I don’t know why they call it VoiceCon anymore. I don’t even see any references to voice really. It’s all about unified communications. So why not just call the conference UCONN?

Is that an omen that UCONN will win the NCAA Men’s Basketball tournament? I don’t know. Dialogic has been saying that “Video Is the New Voice,” so if we’re talking about a “new” V, then we can just go with the nueva villa, Villanova. So maybe that’s an omen. And I’m sure I could find omens for Spartans here (yes, the floor traffic is somewhat spartan compared to the past but not that bad) and North Carolina (what the heck is a Tar Heel anyway – possibly a new Disney character). But I digress.

As I said, I hardly see any mention of voice here, except in relation to voice over IP. People are communicating, that’s for sure, but only in a “unified” way if you believe what you see here. Real-time, or “near real-time communications,” such as IM and presence are growing rapidly, and that is indeed cutting into voice communications. So augmenting voice with these kinds of communications makes sense. But nothing really beats a real discussion as voice nuances are not part of the IM, chat, e-mail, etc. communication stream. I stress that the use of the word “augment” above is not an accident.

So let’s not forget about voice. That doesn’t mean the show shouldn’t be called UCONN though. And that doesn’t mean I’m predicting UCONN to win the whole thing. I had Louisville in the pool.

Jim Machi is senior vice president of marketing for Dialogic, responsible for product planning, product management and marketing. Dialogic develops open systems-based telephony voice, video and signaling products for both the enterprise and service provider market segments.