Messaging and Unified Communications in the Cloud Today

There’s a lot of discussion about unified messaging and communications in the cloud these days, but there seems to be more talk than action. Beyond basic messaging services from Google and Microsoft, there are very few robust unified messaging and unified communications offerings for the enterprise that are delivered as a true multi-tenant service in the cloud.

One company that is pretty far down the unified messaging path in the cloud is Gordano, which recently launched its GMS Cloud, a customizable messaging and collaboration applications platform hosted in the cloud by Gordano.

Gordano recently acquired the messaging assets of Softtalk, which have been incorporated into the Gordano service. In addition, the Gordano service now supports synchronization with any mobile computing device via a new GMS Sync feature.

So while everyone is standing around waiting to see what companies such as Microsoft will eventually deliver next in the cloud in 2011, Gordano Managing Director John Stanner says his company is already delivering unified messaging services. And the most important thing about that, he says, is that Gordano is not hobbling any features in order to bring those services to the cloud, and customers can pretty much customize the environment to their heart’s content.

There’s still a lot of doubt about the relative merits of unified messaging and unified communications in the cloud. But for many companies, these services are no different than the traditional services they use to get from the phone company. Deploying and managing messaging and unified communications software themselves doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, especially when you consider the complexity of a lot of these offerings.

In the meantime, the question that will inevitably rise is whether relatively smaller players such as Gordano can leverage the disruptive nature of cloud computing to unseat bigger, more established rivals. Obviously, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen something like that happen. But as the unified messaging and communications services get more robust in the cloud, it’s clear that more end users are going to be open to some fundamental changes in the way they use these types of technologies.