They may have different ways of getting there, but everyone at last week’s Communications Developer conference agreed on the destination: unified communications.

“Communications is becoming open in a way that allows developers to connect communications to virtually anything from hardware to software to network equipment,” says conference producer TMC President Rich Tehrani. “Leaving the decision about what to implement to the purchaser.

“Virtually every company in the communications business will be offering APIs or some sort of developer program — that’s cast in stone. That’s going to allow all communications developers to connect communications to everything and anything — devices, business processes,” he continues. “Set-top boxes will become video conference hubs. It will just continue.”

As a result, software was the dominant interest area at this year’s conference, Tehrani reports, “driven by various XML languages and SIP. These are the things allowing developers to focus on software and abstract the hardware.”

While everyone agrees on where we’re going, there are two schools of thought about how to get there. If you sell phones, you integrate applications with the phone. If you sell software, you integrate communications with the desktop.

“You see the world through your own glasses,” is how Tehrani puts it. the dichotomy also reflects the ways people interact differently with devices and applications. For example, call center staff are used to interacting through the phone, so it makes sense to have the phone call initiate the transaction. Engineers, on the other hand, interact through their desktop, so it makes sense to have the application initiate the phone call.

Regardless of the model for working, everybody was promoting two things. First, that “unified communications is the ultimate business process enabler,” as Cisco vice president for advanced services Parvesh Sethi put it. And second, a development platform to implement it.

Cisco was showing its Unified Application Designer, an intuitive, graphical tool for building .Net communications applications based on Cisco Call Manager.

Everything is drag-and-drop or menu selection. Cisco development engineer Atul Trasi created a simple application for me in less than five minutes — and that included explaining the system to me.

Not quite as mind-numbingly easy was Avaya’s Voice Portal and Dialog Designer, but the interface was still graphical and building applications was also based on drag-and-drop. Avaya offers both APIs and SDKs as free downloads in addition to comprehensive resource for developers that include technical consulting and equipment discounts.

While some may say that Avaya’s century-long history in telecom leaves the company shackled to old school business and technology models, a huge installed base and long experience in the telecom trenches also gives the company an advantage in the larger marketplace.

Currently, Avaya is actively recruiting development partners, especially to develop vertical market products. One way market growth is going to come is by allowing applications developers to create new value for customers, according to Avaya Marketing Manager Joe Manzuella. “Moving people from traditional telephony to VoIP is not just about saving money,” he adds. “But to voice-enable communications to connect them to the full potential of VoIP.”

I hate writing about something that we sell through the Voxilla Store, but news is news (and no-news is no-news) and our friend Andy Abramson gave us the opening.

A German company, 4S newcom, is pitching an IP PBX that is loaded on an Apple iPod Shuffle (news?) and runs on a Mac Mini (no-news).

The system, called iBlue, will begin shipping on November 6th, to coincide with the VON Europe conference in Berlin.

An entry level system will be priced at 2,999 Euros (about US$3,750) and consists of a Mac Mini (version not disclosed), an iPod Shuffle, and five snom300 IP telephones. The low-end offering licenses up to 250 users and allows 30 concurrent calls.

It’s an interesting enough idea to get some notice from VoIP bloggers like Abramson and Rich Tehrani. But as Abramson points out, a Mac Mini based PBX is not new.

For the past year, we (meaning Voxilla) have been working with the folks at Communigate Systems (based across the Golden Gate from us in Marin County) to get the company’s full-featured cross-platfom internet communications server into the business marketplace. You can read about the product here, (please pardon the shameful internal linking).

The Comunigate Pro server runs on dozens of platforms, including Mac OSX, and comes with a SIP-based PBX, full switch, session border controller, an email server (like Microsoft Exchange, but it actually works) and an XMPP-based IM server. We run Communigate in our offices.

When five of us went to Boston for the VON show last month, we set up Communigate Pro on a Mac Mini to provide telephone service for all of us at the booth. Though the spotty internet connectivity at the Boston Convention Center provided a challenge, Voxilla Director of Engineering Eric Chamberlain got the system up and running with relative ease. The total cost for hardware and software for the system Eric set up is less than US$1,800.

The set-up was definitely a big hit at the booth. Quite a few people were startled to see a full-fledged communications server on such a small (and Mac-elegant) footprint.

We don’t sell the Mac Mini and I prefer to use the iPod as it was intended. But the Communigate Pro-Mac Mini system is slick and easy to set up by the Mac-savvy, and doesn’t have to cost a pretty Euro.

VoIP bloggers Russell Shaw and Rich Tehrani have both weighed in on the role that the cozy relationship between governmental leaders in so-called “Third-World” countries and the established telecom monopolies in those countries may have on VoIP.

Specifically, Shaw and Terhani postulate — through thinly veiled questions — that VoIP is under attack (through port blocking, IP telephony bans and the arrests of VoIP providers) in Namibia, Belarus, Bangladesh, United Arab Emirates and South Korea as a direct result of political malfeasance.

“Many countries have ties between their rulers and the telecom companies that operate in the country,” asserts Tehrani.

“… do I smell the stench of corruption?” asks Shaw.

Of course, Shaw and Tehrani have every right to wonder out loud whether corruption is to blame for unfavorable political actions against VoIP (though an example or two of the countries where “the ruler’s brother or other family member [is] in charge of the nation’s phone company,” as Terhrani writes, would certainly help bolster the claim).

Surprisingly, though, both Shaw and Tehrani give the US a pass when it comes to the same matter. Shaw, usually an astute political observer, at least mentions the relationship between “lobbying and campaign contributions” against net neutrality, though he insists that what happens in Namibia and other places is an “even more overt corruption.”

Is it?

Is it indeed more corrupt than lobbyists and industry chiefs taking friendly politicos on all-expense covered golf treks in Scotland or gifting them luxury NFL sky boxes? Or giving the less-than-qualified offspring of elected officials cushy high-paying jobs? Or lining campaign coffers with thousands of dollars in contributions? And, in all these cases, expecting and receiving favorable votes.

Or, dipping into something even more controversial, invading a country and then giving a company formerly headed by a sitting VP millions upon millions of dollars worth of no-bid rebuilding contracts and sub-contracts?

If we’re going to postulate about “corruption” in the treatment of internet communications, let’s take a look in our own backyard too.

Is there any connection between the thousands of dollars Intrado and its executives sprinkled around “ruling party” politicians in the US and the FCC enactment of antiquated e911 regulations on VoIP providers — regulations that perfectly fit Intrado’s money-making offerings in this area?

Is there a connection between the campaign largesse of the major telecommunications players in the US and the fact that VoIP became the first, and since frequent, internet-based target of politicians and their appointed regulators?

No doubt, corruption is a big problem in many countries. And it would not be surprising if it plays a role in the zeal with which some foreign political leaders are clamping down on VoIP.

But Russell, Rich: If it’s not corruption, what do you call what we have here?