UC NOT Convergence on Steroids!

Let’s face it – your staff is still trying to explain “convergence” to your customers, who only know that something called “VoIP” could replace their traditional phone system.  And now the industry is talking about “Unified Communications”.  What is it, how will it affect your own business and your customers’ business?  I’m going to start with the “what”….

We define unified communications as Communication integrated to optimize business processes. In other words, Unified Communications integrates real-time and non-real time communications with business processes and requirements based on presence capabilities, presenting a consistent unified user interface and experience across multiple devices and media types. Unified Communications supports the enterprise to manage Real-Time and Non-Real-Time communications across multiple devices and applications, and across geographies, with personalized rules and policies, while integrating with back offices applications, systems, and business processes.

When we refer to UC today, we are NOT, I repeat, are NOT talking about unified messaging. While UM is certainly one element of a UC solution, the terms cannot be used interchangeably, and distinctions need to be made to avoid further confusion. Today, UC solutions represent a new generation of communication tools, building upon previously siloed components and tasks. UC components include messaging (email, IM, voice, video), calling (audio, video), conferencing (audio, web, video), presence, device awareness, information sharing (web chat, file sharing, document sharing), business applications, and database access, tied together with a common user interface (which may be Microsoft Office Communicator, or a vendor-specific interface). None of these components is new, but the fact that they are being integrated together to provide enhanced value to businesses, is new.

Even more important, these tools are being tied in with business processes and applications, making them exponentially more useful to businesses and workers. The key here is to optimize the components for the specific job, user, department and company requirements, where optimization is the process of achieving the maximum output per unit of input. Less (components) may well be more (output) in the new UC world.

In the weeks and months to come, there will be an onslaught of announcements related to new UC products and applications. Users will be shaking their heads in confusion, wondering what it all means, and how to sort through the various offerings and approaches. Try to keep in mind that as of now, no single vendor provides all the answers or a complete, comprehensive UC solution. Be wary of anyone who tells you that they have a complete UC offering ­ because in all likelihood, they don¹t. The next few months will be confusing for everyone involved, and it will take time to sort out through the dueling press releases, while figuring out what is real, and what is hype.