Summary
Business communication technology is constantly evolving as employees seek better ways to find the information they need and reach customers faster. Unified Communications (UC) solution extends the capabilities of your existing IP network to include sophisticated telephony, messaging and conferencing features, The advantages of UC include some cost savings, but most of your ROI (Return on Investment) will be realized through business process improvements, such asgreater employee productivity, faster contact among employees and more efficient collaboration. The UC market is still immature,and vendors jumped into it just in 2007. Even though UC is a relatively new technology, it is gaining ground quickly with enterprises.
Analysis
UC began when enterprises started to converge all of their communications on IP networks. The proliferation of open software platforms made UC a relatively easy next step in the evolution of business communications. UC combines voice, video, email and IM (Instant Messaging) into a unified platform. It also integrates applications, such as presence and availability tools — knowing where any employee is at any time and automatically selecting the best way to reach him or her.
Vendors are attacking the UC market from all sides, coming at it withdifferent strengths and from different perspectives.Two industries jointly developedthe emerging UC market: telecommunications companies, such as PBX vendors with unified messaging and IM; and email/desktop collaboration providers.This illustrates an important point for any UC buyer: there are several different ways vendors deliver a UC system, even though the basic features and functionality are similar. Currently, each vendor offers different advanced features.
Some UC solutions are network-centric, like Cisco Systems Inc.’s offering; this places integration at the network level and includes hardware components.Similarly, ShoreTel Inc.’s solution is an end-to-end IP communications system with IP phones, switches and UCapplications. Others, like Microsoft Corp.’s system, are software-centric, which puts integration on the server and desktop level. Either way, UC solutions should interoperate with your existing hardware infrastructure and communications software. Most vendors offer modular UC solutions, so you can purchase and deploy the applications either all atonce or separately as your organization requires additional functionality.Two additional major players in the UC market are Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya. They also sell pure software solutions, but they’re among the minority of vendors that bundle their offerings into suites of UC applications. In addition, Siemens AG offers its OpenScape Unified Communications Suite, which interoperates closely with the Microsoft Office Communication Server 2007 R2, a key component of that vendor’s UC offering. Most of vendors playing the UC market are relying on partnerships to round out their UC offerings.
Many vendors are still developing their solutions, so not every UC function is ready for prime time. For example, federated presence — which shares users’ availability outside corporate boundaries — currently provides only marginal utility.
It’s important to also note that UC SaaS (Software as a Service) offerings are beginning to emerge from vendors like PanTerra Networks Inc. Like other SaaS offerings, PanTerra’s eliminates the need for SMBs to invest in their own IP network equipment and UC softwareor manage the complex integration on their own. Also, SaaS solutions let you adopt a pay-as-you-go model for UC, which can be particularly cost effective for smaller companies with fewer employees that need to use UC applications.
If you intend to use UC in sophisticated ways, such as in contact centers or integrating it with business processes, you can expect to develop a best-of-breed solution. In the end, you will determine which features are included with your UC solution. Naturally, adding advanced features such as video and contact-center tools can significantly raise the cost, particularly if you choose a video solution sold separately from the vendor’s UC solution.
UC benefits include speeding up communications, improving employees’ access to information across the organization and better collaboration among staff. The benefits are most dramatic for remote employees who can usually be fully integrated into the organization’s communications for the first time. UC can lead to happier customers because your customer-facing workers can access the data they need to fix customer problems faster. On the ITside, converging the various disparate communications systems can result in simpler system management.UC can ultimately lead to shorter project times, shorter product cycles, faster time to market and greater employee productivity.UC also can be an important business tool to improve existing business processes and reduce costly business delays for time-sensitive situations.Some hard benefits from UC are usually realized in a lower total cost of ownership as well as decreased overhead costs. For example, UC’s real-time collaboration tools can help companies drastically cut down on business-travel expenses. Companies can also save on outsourced conferencing services when they move all audio and video conferencing in house.
A UC solution can save your company money in several areas, such as travel expenses, since employees can conference over the Web instead of flying to meet with co-workers in-person.if you base your ROI (Return on Investment) calculation on business-process improvements, UC’s ROI is often less than two years.The most important factor in determining potential benefits for UC solutions is estimating how it will improve employees’ ability to communicate.The bottom line is that UC can facilitate communications for a company of any size, but those with a highly distributed work force stand to gain the most.
Like any new technology, deploying UC is not without its risks. The widespread integration among new and existing applications can be complicated, for instance.You may also face organizational issues. Since UC is too new to have a set of established best practices, you may be on your own to meet those challenges, particularly the complex integrations between existing infrastructure, communication applications and the new UC software.
