Siemens Being Bought?? Unified Communications Keynote at UC Summit 2008 By Mark Straton of Siemens

UC Summit is an exclusive conference of leading vendors, analysts, consultants, and opinion leaders in the growing area of Unified Communications (post from cofounder Blair Pleasant on day 1 of the UC Summit). Here we have the opening keynote by Mark Straton Senior Vice President of Siemens Enterprise Systems. Mark delivers the keynote speech at the Unified Communications Summit 2008 – UC Summit 2008.

In this talk Mark talks about the role of software in Unified Communications. More importantly Mark addresses the growing opportunity around consolidation. It has been rumored that Siemens is spinning out or selling its software enterprise group. Candidates include Microsoft, Nortel, IBM, and Cisco.

UC Summit 2008 is the first conference for UCStrategies.com – a growing authority blog on the vertical of unified communications.

Founder of UCStrategies, Jim Burton, comments on the state of Unified Commications. He says “Unified Communications has moved beyond the IP PBX and the soft phone on our PC. Very significantly, its reached the point where end-user behavior has created the need for more flexible communication tools and access to information at any time from anywhere. Going from “what will the customer do with it’ to “how will technology meet the changing communication patterns of the end-user” was a twisty road. But here we are – at a point where the narrow, twisty dirt road is about to widen and become a busy 6-lane highway!”

The interesting think from Mark Straton speech is the speculation that a major consolodation will happen nad that Siemens Enterprise (Unified Communications software group) will be bought in the next 60 days by a major player. My guess it will be someone who values software. The only name Mark didn’t mention in his keynote is Nortel.

If Nortel is the candidate to buy Siemens unified communications division what does this mean to their Microsoft relationship?