Personally, I think customers should tell vendors making a pitch to proceed, but “the first time you use a buzz phrase I’m throwing your ass out.” It would serve customers well in the long run.

As to the mergers, I think they’ll proceed pretty much as expected. I’m not terribly excited by Cisco’s approaches, but I guess that shows in what I said about them. I do think they’ll start losing more in enterprise competition. I think Avaya’s on the rise and the Nortel acquisition is a good thing in principle. Avaya seems to struggle at times in execution and how good the buy will before for them will really depend on whether ot not they can execute smoothly and quickly. Solid execution will really pump them up. Weak execution will push them toward “ho hum” IMHO.

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I was thinking in terms of customers moving beyond the hype and buzzword bingo confusion that so many vendors parlay into the FUD factor (fear, uncertainty and doubt) when they’re selling. Sometimes it’s intentional obfuscation on the part of the marketing messaging designers. Often it’s simply ignorance and limited understanding on the part of sales people. But it’s confusing to customers, and they’re sick and tired of it. They don’t want a buzz phrase or acronym. They want to know “what’s this going to do for my business in specific detail.” That will be a change I expect we’ll see in 2010. Customers will be more aggressive at holding vendors’ feet to the fire.

I”m not sure about mobi-C, although I do see strong mobile convergence as a trend ahead.