Unified Communication: Need of the Hour

It a time when organizations are planning or are in the early

stages of adoption of IP telephony, videoconferencing, audio-conferencing, and

Web-collaboration tools in India, thinking of unified communication (UC) makes

an interesting revelation on where technology is taking business communication.

How is it impacting business results and how one must plan while making

investments to ensure that technology benefits in the near future accrue earlier

than they do for competing firms? Just as we are finding communication moving

from the traditional TDM networks to IP networks, with UC the communication

would be moving from the network to the business applications bringing in a more

informed and intelligent communication.

Why UC?



Let's take a journey into the current communication scenario. Essentially,
today an employee is bombarded with communication from multiple communication

devices and applications. The challenges of business communication today are

that they have a complex nature are disconnected, and expensive. There is an

information overload and one finds it difficult to understand what is the best

mode of communication to remain effective.

The need of the hour is to simplify and become more efficient to

deliver business results. UC is making the communication more intelligent and

time efficient. It is simplifying communication and tying-in to business

processes. It's essentially targeting to merge real-time and non-real-time

communication with a seamless identity and interface across devices. This is

where organizations need to delve deeper while making infrastructure

investments, and determine if and how these investments in due course, will be

able to result into competitive differentiation.

Unified Communication Defined



Unified communications is a key application area under intelligent
communication. Industry analyst group Gartner defines UC as the direct result of

convergence in communication networks and applications. Different forms of

communication have historically been developed, marketed, and sold as individual

applications. The convergence of all communications on IP networks and on open

software platforms is allowing a new paradigm for Unified Communication.

UC is essentially "Communications integrated to optimize

business processes". The key is that communication, at least in a business

enterprise, should be thought of in terms of the business process-task,

project, contact or collaboration- to which the communication is related. This

takes communication out of the realm of a highly personalized, inconsistent

"manual" task and puts it into an informed, predictable, and

measurable context.

Routes to Follow



Unified communications can be based on any one of the three routes, which in
turn are differentiated by three factors: addressing, identity, and media types.

The telephony-based route uses a telephone number as the

addressing and identity route and voice as the primary media type. The

IP-telephony suppliers such as Avaya and Alcatel are advancing this model.

The messaging-based route uses SMTP and IM addresses as the

addressing and identity route, and text with attachments as the primary media

type. The leading email providers such as Microsoft and IBM are advancing this

model.

Finally, the application-based route uses employee

identification numbers as the addressing and identity model, with database

information in Web portals as the primary media type. Enterprise application

software providers such as SAP and Oracle/Siebel are advancing this model.

In each case, suppliers work to extend their route to

incorporate the other media, initially through expanded user/client interfaces

and then by integrating their own and others' capabilities in a "service

oriented architecture" (SOA).

Deliverables



Organizations are constantly in search of new ways to transform their
businesses, to streamline processes in order to achieve greater productivity and

to communicate more efficiently with customers, suppliers, and employees. For

this, UC offers a distinct competitive advantage.

UC intends to deliver value in three main categories: customer

experience, differentiation of ones business, and controlling resources (time,

payroll, assets, expenses, etc). The first two, customers and differentiation,

should drive up revenue, while the third should cut costs. Unified Communication

help to improve the accuracy of person-to-person communications, accelerate

business processes and productivity, and improve an organization's ability to

adapt to market changes.

Adopting the UC Paradigm



The way forward is to envisioning the end state where long-term
opportunities are headed. Then determine the need in different areas and further

select projects with near-term benefits that will help produce quick results.

Is UC deployment something that will involve all employees, or

be focused on few critical processes and applications? One may begin by

examining both their list of key processes and roster of employee job types.

Where the most important processes touch the largest group(s) of employees is

exactly where UC should first be implemented. It's important that business

process improvement "champion or innovator or teams" use UC for

improvising their business processes to derive efficient guidelines. With UC,

these teams must target to eliminate massive amounts of wasted time and expense.

They should find ways to deliver better products and services faster or less

expensively than their competitors. The key is to get these benefits and

transform them to get work done. UC can become an integral part of shortening

cycle times, building customer satisfaction, and other activities that can be

directly connected with hard economic results.

Components of UC



The components of a UC solution 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 IBM Sametime, Microsoft Office Communicator, or a

vendor, say Avaya specific interface).

Presence is a critical component of UC. Presence will involve a

presence server hooked into everything. This means communicating and integrating

information from a variety of devices indicating that I'm talking on the phone

or cell; my desktop applications notify the server that I'm actively working

on a document; and maybe my car tells the server that I'm driving down to my

office.

The Path Ahead



Telephony-based solutions are being built on voice over IP (VoIP) PBX
networks. Computer telephony integration (CTI) and session initiation protocol

(SIP) will be used to connect PBX systems to business processes and

communication resources, as has been done in contact centers in the past decade.

Resources will include conferencing, voice messaging, instant messaging, speech

interfaces, and links to cellular phones. Business processes will include links

to customer databases and to users' calendars, contacts, and tasks. Most

telephony-based suppliers will offer a software client for PCs, and smart mobile

phones will allow access to the user's email account, in order to provide a

fully integrated experience.

Messaging-based solutions are being built on email servers and

clients, including and expanding the suite of personal and office software

tools, such as calendar, contacts, and tasks. Messaging-based solutions will

also incorporate IM options integrated into the office tools so that a user's

presence status will be informed by calendar events, and thus pointing at a

users' directory entry, contact information or IM entry will allow initiation

of voice and video communications. These real-time elements will be provided,

either by CTI links to the installed PBX systems and related servers, or by

adding IP and SIP-based servers to the messaging configurations, utilizing both

server-based and peer-to-peer IP communications.

Application-based solutions are being built on the user

interfaces of the applications, including PC clients, Web browsers, mobile

wireless devices, and speech interfaces, to deliver the required communication

elements to employees at the appropriate point in the process. The applications

will deliver the communication functions by integrating to modular, SOA-type

services; these services may be bundled into the application package or may be

accessed via CTI, SIP or other IT integrations to telephony or messaging

servers.

Market Impact



Unlike the VoIP market that is primarily substituting VoIP for TDM telephony
without growing the overall market, it is likely that the ability of UC to

displace labor and other intermediate costs and expenses will justify an

increase in the overall level of spending in the communications industry, for

the first time in over two decades.

According to a Gartner Report, 80% of enterprise communications

purchase decisions will require support for UC by 2007. By 2008, the Radicati

Group estimates that the worldwide UC market will be worth a total of $10.5 bn.

It's important to start evaluating your business operations

and determine which key processes can be optimized with unified communications

capabilities. You may not care right now, but your competitors certainly do!!!

Vivek Porwal



The author is head of the Unified

Communications Business Unit, Avaya GlobalConnect



vadmail@cybermedia.co.in