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Departments
Business Technology
Solving the Unified Communications puzzle
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| Scott Kinka
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Always connected. Always on. Always available. Sounds great, huh? I guess it depends on your point of view.
It is impossible to open up the pages of your favorite technology magazine without being assaulted by the concept — Unified Communications. What does Unified Communications mean? Well, frankly, it depends on who is offering the definition.
Simply stated, Unified Communications refers to the concept of unifying phone, email, fax, chat, video and collaboration into a single channel, either on a device or on a computer. If I receive a voicemail, it is deposited in my email box where I can listen, review the availability status of the party who left me the voicemail and respond at that time in that person’s desired communication channel, which may be chat, phone or email.
The purpose of Unified Communications to reduce communications latency or, in traditional terms, telephone tag. It aims to reduce my time to respond to a communication by making all my available “return call” methods available at a single click without looking up phone numbers or typing out email addresses. It aims to increase the likelihood that the other party will be available to receive my communication by sharing information about the other party’s availability and preferred method of communication (referred to as “presence”). And it aims to improve the quality of those communications by adding to the mix additional PC-based communications, such as chat, video and collaboration (desktop file sharing and presentations).
So where’s the magic device that makes this all happen? Well, therein lies the challenge.There is no magic device. Unified Communications is not a piece of software you can buy off of the shelf. It’s a concept that includes many disparate components that must work in concert to provide the end user the unified experience.
More specifically, the components of a Unified Communications solution include (but are not limited to) the following components:
- IP PBX — For the promise of Unified Communications to be realized, the phone system must be able to integrate with outside components to share presence information and voicemail. While many phone system vendors sell the PBX as the heart of the Unified Communications landscape, the phone should be considered another application to be “shared” with the other applications on the user’s desktop. PC-based call control is a basic Unified Communications tool that enables end users to answer and transfer calls, initiate dials and adjust phone features from the interface where they spend most of their day.
- Email — The second most used and most important component of any UC solution is email. Because most email clients are also the location where a user keeps schedules and contacts, it is perhaps the most important application in the UC landscape.
- Unified Messaging — UM probably does not deserve its own category as it is generally a component of the IP PBX. It refers to the ability of the PBX to deliver voicemail and faxes as email to eliminate the need to check a second (or third) location for messages. It is mentioned here as a separate item because it is often confused with Unified Communications. UM is a component of UC.
- Instant Messaging — IM has moved from the secret of the IT department to a universally accepted means of communication. Aside from shortening mundane communications that do not require the pleasantries of a phone conversation, it was also the first real “presence” application as it has been used as a means to see if someone is “available to talk” since its inception.
- Desktop Video — The proliferation of inexpensive desktop video cameras and simple point to point video applications has pushed the barrier of entry for video conferencing down to even the smallest businesses. While the technology is moving fast, it is an important consideration in the UC landscape.
- Collaboration — Collaboration refers to services that are traditionally called conferencing (voice, Web or video) and have the ability to pull multiple parties together into a work space to share documents, presentations, video, etc. WebEx is an example of a widely used collaboration application.*
- Mobility — This generally refers to the ability to use the mobile phone to perform many of the functions listed above, but it can be as simple as enabling an end user to answer on a mobile phone calls that were intended for their office phone.
- Application Integration — This is a very large topic, but it refers to the ability to pull some or all of the items listed above into the applications that the end users touch day to day in their work, from CRM to ERP and accounting systems.
What really drives the UC story, however, is Presence. It is also the single biggest barrier to pulling off the promise of true seamless communication. Presence refers to the ability to “see” whether another party is available to communicate via your intended path, or even to see what method that user would most like to use based on his or her current situation. If done right, Presence can be the single biggest driver toward reducing communication latency.
A Presence engine (or server) must pull information from several locations to make this a reality. IBM and Microsoft have Presence solutions. So do many of the IP PBX manufacturers. This raises interesting issues. Is Presence a PBX application or a messaging application? What system takes the lead? How do you complete a short-term delivery of features without cutting yourself off from future opportunities?
None of these questions has an easy answer. But you should start with determining what features will have the most impact on your end users. If you have a large mobile workforce, Unified Messaging and Mobility alone will have a large impact on your users. Both are often included as a capability in IP PBXs without much, if any, integration to work with other systems. A large in-house call center might get the best bang for its buck by focusing on Application Integration between their systems and the PBX.
Trying to get it all? Start with the Presence engine and build out from there, ensuring that your email, chat and PBX all integrate with the Presence engine to allow for real-time sharing of status information.
Regardless what path you choose, ensure that your individual product selections use standard protocols, have a well documented API (Application Programming Interface) to support future plans, include a documented and tested list of interoperable equipment, and can actually demonstrate what they are selling (preferably outside of their demo lab).
The promise of Unified Communications is out there. Tread carefully and execute your seamless communications strategy with a tactical approach that has clear and realistic expectations.
Scott Kinka is the Senior Vice President of Network Services for Evolve IP, a provider of hosted solutions and managed technology that is unifying and simplifying the way businesses communicate. For more information, please visit www.evolveip.net.
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