At its outset, unified communications got a red carpet welcome, with tall claims like 'the next telecom revolution after telephone'. And, even today is predicted to radically change the way businesses communicate. However, years after introduction of the concept, unified communications is still limited to top notch organizations and is struggling hard to become a hot favorite, though it has managed to satisfy the first level CIO/CTOs to make the technology popular and well accepted. Here, we will look at different aspects of unified communications, the pain and plus points, and the road ahead.

Large enterprises are very much aware of solutions that unified communication can offer and how useful these solutions are in the present business scenario. So, they have their own expertise working in co-ordination with vendors to get a right solution for their organization. Here, the vendor is selling the product, but their job is restricted only to serve the demand of the customer because the customer has its own presence. This doesn't apply in the case of small and medium enterprises. "If a vendor comes to me and makes a presentation of how successfully the solution has been deployed in a large organization, my immediate thought would be the higher cost involved with the solution," says Vishwajeet Singh, manager, IT, Friends Global Travels. "Our requirements are totally different from that of large enterprises and at the same time we don't have a large IT team," he further adds.

Hurdles in the Way
The UC market is at an early stage of maturity. Vendors need to be more aggressive in promoting these solutions. "Utilization, requirement, and value addition are the three levels for the success of any solution," says Singh. To induce an enterprise to adopt a solution, they need to be made aware of the prima facie utilizations and benefits of the converged communication," says Dhiren Salva, CIO, Kuoni Travels India. The low awareness factor becomes more evident with the example of Omaxe, a construction company with a turnover of around Rs 1,000 crore. The company is growing by leaps and bounds every year and a unified communications solution would have been a perfect answer to the challenges imposed with such a widespread infrastructure. "We have a VoIP solution from Tulip with twenty licenses. We use it for communication between different work sites and our senior officials. We preferred Tulip over BSNL and others because the cost involved was one fifth and the services were extremely satisfactory," says Atul Bansal, senior IT manager, Omaxe Construction. The company is also planning to go for large-scale deployment of an audio and video conferencing solution from Webex, for their upcoming call center. Here also they overlooked vendors like Polycom, because of the cost involved and complexity of the solution. "The solution from Webex is very easy to use and it is flexible with our requirements, which was not there with Polycom," says Atul. When asked about unified communications, Atul says, "We have already invested in different solutions in a phased manner. Replacing them for the sake of a unified solution would be a little difficult. Besides, no vendor has approached us till date. We are moving ahead as per our own demands and business goals."

Too much initial cost also stood as a barrier in penetrating the larger segment of the market at one stage, but now the price effect is gradually taking a back seat, considering the RoI factor. "We are not worried about the initial cost. But, we want to have a clear statistics on RoI" says Singh. Dhiren of Kuoni Travel agrees, "One time investment is OK with us, if the solution promises a major cost cut at a later stage."

"There is no such ideal solution available in the market. Vendors are imposing what big companies are using as standard," says Singh. This is one of the big issues raised by most industry users. "Look at the other technology solutions such as ERP, CRM, and SCM. They all are getting recognition in the market because they have reached a matured state. People have faith in these solution." says Atul of Omaxe.

"The unified communication solutions available are not well defined or well developed. These issues certainly prevent us from adopting unified communications at this stage. We would prefer to wait till the time these solutions mature," he further adds.

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