I just talked this morning with Fred Knight, the general manager for VoiceCon. The 17th edition of the conference is starting this week in San Francisco. It focuses on the corporate buyers (Fortune 1000 companies, State or local governments, universities...) of communications products and services unlike VON, which attracts more "telecommunication operators and developers".

"We began this conference over 17 years ago (as PBX), way before voice over IP was even a topic of conversation. We evolved over the years because we focus on a market and not on a single technology. Our goal was to present to the buyer what the migrations options are and showcase how the technology is evolving", said Fred Knight.

More on the interview after the jump.

On VoiceCon versus VON:

"VON overwhelming has attendance from the carriers and the product developers. And it has a much more heavy consumer focus. Our focus is specifically on the enterprise, on business customers and primarily larger businesses".

About VoiceCon SF:

"VoiceCon SF is in its third consecutive year. The metrics are uniformally up, in the 25 to 30% range, in terms of number of exhibitors, attendees, square footage..."

On the trends and themes of this year's conference:

"Unified communication is a significant theme. We began talking about it last year, but this year is a centerpiece and baked as the core component of the programme. A second major theme will be the changing market environment on the seller side: in the past five months since the last VoiceCon in Orlando, we've seen Avaya going from a public company to a privately held company, a number of mergers and acquisitions (e.g. Mitel bought Inter-Tel), etc. The migration from communications being hardware intensive to becoming more software intensive (Microsoft announced Office Communications Server but is late shipping it!).