Unified Communications - where's mine?...
Hmm,
Day two of our technical conference and I'm irritated. The sessions so far have been really good, the opportunity to chat to the people in the product team is always great. I get to hear what's going on at the moment and what we're doing in the future - especially in the Unified Communications area. Office Communicator Server 2007 which will shortly go to public beta (mail me if you'd like to be considered for the private beta by the way. You need to have the sort of environment that meets the criteria, and be have the sort of organisation that would be prepared to work closely with the product team).
So what's bothering me?
I've just been listening in to a session on the future of Unified Communications - a high level overview about what's coming up this year. The Office RoundTable video was shown (see it on Soapbox by the way), then demoed live in the room. I saw RoundTable in use (3 or 4 guys in the room next to the auditorium) then I saw a new device - an intelligent phone that totally integrated with Office Communicator. And that's where I started to get annoyed.
I'm now all fired up about how amazing these devices are, and I want to rush out and start demoing these toys at events. Honestly, you'll have your socks blown off by how amazing these devices are and how collaboration and unified communications all fits together. But they're not yet available to us outside corp...
So now I've got to start hassling the chaps over at the Unified Communications team, groveling and begging for these devices too, so I (and everyone else in the field) can demo at events. Otherwise - we need to get hold of a technical video showcasing just what's coming up in the future.
But I wish I didn't get so excited about the great stuff that's coming up in the near future stuff if I can't get my hands on it for ages. Grrr...