Commentary: A new era for unified communications

The use of communications technologies in the workplace has grown steadily over the last few decades – so much so that tools such as audio conferencing, mobile phone, email, video and web conferencing, and instant messaging have become so commonplace that many workers could not imagine doing their jobs without them. Traditionally, unified communications (UC) technologies have existed as disparate tools that operate separately in silos – with different interfaces and technologies for the end user to learn and the IT department to manage and secure. More and more companies are starting to realize that there are cost savings if they can converge all their communications systems that span IT, telephony and the network. They also see the value of changing purchasing habits from point solutions for things like IP-PBX and look instead to more holistic communications approaches in a platform. Although the concept of unifying communications technologies isn’t new, companies have realized that in order to obtain the anticipated cost savings, they need to look at UC technologies that are integrated into familiar, intuitive end user and IT environments. For example, many organizations want to leverage these capabilities to cut travel costs, help reduce telephony and audio conferencing charges and take advantage of UC’s potential to deliver a richer multimedia experience with the identical ease-of-use as an email. But, if employees don’t understand how to use the technology or find it too jarring, even if deployment occurs, adoption will be stalled. Communications for the masses Ultimately, for a UC solution to effectively bring value to the business, it needs to deliver a unified, seamless experience to the end-user, enabling workers to easily launch any type of communication – whether it’s audio, video, web-conferences, instant messaging or e-mail from a single user-interface. It also needs to deliver efficiencies to IT and telecoms. A good UC solution does both. From an IT perspective, we are often asked what the ideal UC environment looks like. While there is no right or wrong answer, it’s best to consider a few key characteristics. Firstly, there is a growing shift in the importance of software in a UC environment. UC gets most exciting when you can embed the communications capabilities into business processes – driving new efficiencies. Secondly, another important characteristic is easy integration of communications capabilities. The integration should drive efficiencies and not complexity for IT, making it simple to deploy, support and secure. To achieve this, a UC implementation should have Application Program Interfaces (APIs), a single directory, common monitoring tools, and universal notifications — enabling IT managers to access familiar and intuitive management solutions and servers. In the end, the goal of a UC implementation is to foster a communications environment that is pervasive and easy to use and manage. In this way, companies allow workers to communicate how they want, where they want, when they want. Take an organization such as Cogan Wire, for example. Cogan Wire leveraged a UC platform for its video-conferencing capabilities and saved $300,000 in travel expenses and $100,000 in training costs. But what for me is more exciting was the finding that instead of taking a week or so to book face-to-face meetings based on flight schedules etc, Cogan Wire was able to replace a portion of these meetings with web conferences to meet more quickly and frequently with partners and customers. The end result was faster project completion times. UC had enabled Cogan to save money and better serve their customers. Bringing it to the business An effective approach to get to UC is to look at unifying where the solution can deliver the greatest and fastest return on investment. This is done by considering a variety of factors including what you currently have and the particular problem that needs solving. However, these decisions should reflect the bigger objective to ultimately unify all of your communications. This strategic approach can help organizations realize the ultimate goal of UC: cost-effectively enabling information workers to easily communicate with colleagues, customers and partners in real-time. Implementation of a UC strategy can help lay the groundwork for growing, enhancing and managing all aspects of a corporate communications infrastructure. Bryan Rusche is Microsoft Canada’s Unified Communications and Collaboration Product Manager.

Commentary: A new era for unified communications

News | September 29, 2009

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