A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies

This week’s issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by VoiceCon Spring 2007

Register NOW for the premier event for enterprise IP Telephony, Converged Networks and Unified Communications. VoiceCon Spring will be held March 5-8 at the Gaylord Palms in Orlando. Meet the industry’s market and thought leaders during in-depth tutorials, candid roundtable discussions and insightful panels. And the VoiceCon Exhibition presents ALL of the suppliers—equipment and services—in one location. Register a team of 3 or more and save $200 per person.

The phrase that helped popularize environmental concerns in the early 1970s has direct applicability to Unified Communications in the 2000s: Think globally, act locally.

At the global level, UC is a major shift in how buyers and sellers approach communications solutions. Since Unified Communications is “Communications integrated to optimize business processes” (ref. UCStrategies.com), UC almost always touches on at least two of the three major constituencies below:

1. Voice Communication Systems providers—Avaya, Cisco, Nortel, Siemens, etc. They are all investing to unify voice and video communications (calling, conferencing, messaging plus UC clients and presence), and will then integrate the new solutions with business applications and with desktop office tools.
2. Desktop Office software providers—Microsoft, IBM Lotus, Novell and others are investing to expand their e-mail, calendar, contacts, IM and office tools into a complete collaborative environment including presence, shared workspaces, conferencing and social networking. They will then enhance or integrate these new solutions to include voice and video communications.
3. The Business Application software providers—SAP, Oracle, Computer Associates, BEA Systems and others are investing in complete suites of information and tools to enable customers and employees to perform an enterprise’s work. They will then integrate voice and video communication and office tools into those suites.

Of course, many other suppliers are building networks, devices and accessories to work with one or more of these three major forces.

From a buyer’s standpoint, thinking globally involves thinking about Unified Communications across your enterprise’s business processes and jobs. And it involves considering what each of the three major solution providers forces brings to the party—what products, applications and solutions do you now use and which are you planning for in the near future? Which are most prominent in your strategic planning?

Once you have that global view, act locally—i.e., incrementally. Successful results are being reported by companies that bring UC into focus for a single business process that involves a few specific job categories. This lets them capture the available high-ROI opportunities right away and use those savings or profits to pay for the next “local” action in another process/job category. We expect to hear a lot about this at VoiceCon Spring 2007, especially in customer panels that will highlight what’s worked, what hasn’t and why (see the VoiceCon Spring conference program).

As these customers will explain, you can act locally right now. UC products are available from an ever-growing list of suppliers, and the products will work with currently installed software and product versions, including traditional versions of TDM PBX, e-mail and application systems. This is accomplished using both the familiar (CSTA, QSIG, SMTP, LDAP, etc) and newer (SIP, XML, SOAP, etc.) interfaces.

Also, it’s often both possible and practical to upgrade only for the job categories that need new UC functionality. We’ve seen this with the RIM Blackberry, which is still most often used by specific groups of mobile employees whose business processes are e-mail driven. Other examples might include:

• Installing an IP PBX with Unified Messaging and Mobility features to support only the customer-facing teams in branch offices and virtual offices, and connecting TDM switches in the HQ and production sites with QSIG signaling to preserve a single, enterprise-wide uniform dial plan.
• Providing IBM SameTime or Microsoft Office Communicator with presence and IM for only the collaborative teams in marketing or product design.
• Adding integrated UC communication functionality to Business Application servers and portals only for the customer facing teams, such as the order desk and accounts receivable, to improve customer responsiveness and reduce errors.

Of course, most of the sales and marketing energy in all three categories of the UC industry is focused on the global themes—convert your entire enterprise to VOIP, enterprise-wide desktop upgrades, mobility for everybody, and conversion of your enterprise applications to new fully integrated portals. These are good themes and can be included in your strategic plan. But don’t forget to act now, locally, to get started and to achieve some impressive optimization of business processes.

I’d welcome your thoughts on the topic. Please send me a note with your global and local thoughts on UC, to marty@parkerbiz.com or here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum.

Marty Parker
Communication Perspectives and UCStrategies.com

Posted in Management, Market Trends, Marty Parker, Unified Communications |

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