Siemens Channel Partners: Testing Unified Communications In Amazon's Cloud

Over the next six months or so, Siemens will work with selected channel partners to test unified communications in Amazon’s cloud, according Paul McMillan (pictured), Siemens’ director of unified communications technical vision and strategy. Here’s the scoop from McMillan, who spoke with The VAR Guy during VoiceCon Orlando 2009.

Roughly 18 months ago, Siemens started looking at next-generation data centers — and examining where unified communications fit into the picture. Gradually, the company developed a strategy to port its unified communications software into Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Ultimately, the goal is to give partners and customers a front-end portal that allows them to pick and choose the UC services they want.

Working with Amazon “is not an exclusive relationship,” says McMillan. “But we choose Amazon because they have the most well known cloud out there. And they have a world-class logistical infrastructure.”

Translation: There’s a potential scenario where VARs and customers will be able to use Siemens in the Amazon cloud to purchase on-premise technologies (such as handsets). Amazon’s logistics system will then ship and route quickly to the appropriate destinations.

Over the next two quarters, Siemens expects to test UC services in the Amazon cloud with selected channel partners and independent software developers (ISVs). “The Amazon cloud has more than 450,000 developers,” notes McMillan. “If we get five percent of those developers interested in Siemens, that’s orders of magnitude larger than” traditional UC ISV programs.

Hmmm. McMillan may have a point. The VAR Guy will be watching as Siemens’ cloud strategy takes shape.

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