The purpose of white paper is to provide the Business Decision Maker (BDM) with a non‐technical understanding of those factors that are critical to the successful performance of a Unified Communications (UC) solution with a focus on the voice application. Voice is the most widely implemented UC application to date.
Today the competitive tension between application vendors, network vendors and a new wave of UC vendors has introduced a polarization of opinion on whether ‐ network management with attention to codec selection and Quality of Service (QoS), which concerns measurement of the treatment of the packets traversing a network including utilization, response time, latency (delays), delay variation, packet loss, jitter and availability, or application performance management with its focus on the unique VoIP Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements associated with differing business scenarios ‐ is the key to reliable operational performance. The truth of course is that both these aspects must be appropriately managed. And there is no one size fits all.
The design and implementation of a UC solution must be targeted to each enterprise’s unique needs if an optimal tradeoff of business requirements for enhancing individual and business process productivity, interoperability with legacy infrastructure and total cost of ownership is to be achieved. In achieving this balance the BDM must recognize that the productivity enhancing benefits of UC applications (e.g. UM, presence, integration with other business applications and simplicity of use) may be accompanied by performance considerations around bandwidth utilization and higher delay. However, with proper network design, attention to codec selection, QoS implementation in the network, and comprehensive performance management tools, it is possible to implement UC successfully.