Marty
Posted: Tuesday, December 15, 1:56 PM
Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 2


 As a parallel historical example to the problem of the name for Unified Communications, the early automobiles had a wide variety of names: horseless carriage, autocar, roadster, tin lizzy, and more. The engines were electric, gas, and steam. And you couldn’t even constrain the definition by listing components. Some early automobiles could be steered with tillers, while others used steering wheels. Some had three wheels, some had four; wheels were wood, iron, solid rubber, or tubes. But the point was clear that the horse was no longer the premier form of motive power. It took almost three decades for that transition (the US Army still used mostly horse-drawn vehicles in WWI, 20 years after the first automobiles), but the change just kept coming. By the middle of the 20th century, the automobile had redefined most industrial societies, changing cities, services, and social structures. The results were more efficient business methods and more personal convenience, though with some generally unanticipated downside costs. Now, we’re faced with the same diversity of change in business communications. New methods for communications have arrived on the scene and we’re struggling to organize and maintain them into neat categories. For now, one of the broadest general terms is Unified Communications. Yet, there are also adjacent or subordinate or overlapping categories, such as Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), or Collaboration, or Integrated Process Automation (IPA), names all currently in use in relationship to UC.