A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies

This week’s issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by Unified Communication Strategies:

Unified Communication Strategies is an industry resource and web portal to help enterprises, vendors, and system integrators develop their UC strategies. A source of objective information and thought leadership on Unified Communications, we provide analysis, executive interviews, podcasts, white papers, and other information on the UC industry. Visit our website for more detail: http://www.ucstrategies.com/

Maybe I used the word “sledding” in the title of this week’s UC eWeekly because I’m working from home today, snowed in while a foot or so of the white stuff falls on Chicago. The wind is blowing, the temperature is dropping and maybe I’m trying to rekindle the joy I felt as a kid, when winter meant outdoor ice skating and sledding. Yeah, right…more likely the title was selected because I’m ticked, because I’m not living it up in a real “promised land”-somewhere with sun, surf and sand.

But the title also came to me because I’ve been reading material prepared by Jen Pahlka, a colleague who runs the Enterprise 2.0 and Web 2.0 events for CMP. Jen was writing a recap of what she saw and heard during the recent FASTforward Conference, which bills itself as being focused on “Innovative, Search-powered Business Transformation.” The FASTforward event is more about search and social networking than Unified Communications, but these applications have much in common.

For starters, while these apps are generating lots of interest, sales remain low. Jen heard a litany of challenges that inhibit enterprises from deploying social networking technologies, among them the following: Perceived lack of support from the top, IT departments are understaffed and undertrained (you gotta love this one: “expertise in COBOL not Ruby on Rails”) and a tendency to get lost in the tools-i.e., to lose the forest for the trees. Clearly, the same set of issues confronts UC’s proponents.

To be sure, there are enterprises-and major ones like Proctor and Gamble, Global Crossing, JWT and Citigroup-that are using social networking tools, just as there are early adopters of UC. But we’re at such an early stage that most adopters of either set of applications are proceeding based on instinct. “Trials” dominate the deployments to date as early adopters seek to gain experience with these new tools and to learn whether the hoped-for benefits will materialize and at what cost. Jen’s notation-”All we have at this stage are anecdotes and case studies and hope“-is as true for UC as it is for Web and Enterprise 2.0 technologies.

It comes as no surprise, of course, that time is needed before new technologies move from the outer fringe to the mainstream. UC and the Web/Enterprise 2.0 technologies have been the source of much hype. and now the inevitable backlash is beginning. What’s important for buyers is to ignore the broad swings of the popularity pendulum and to keep their eyes on the prize: What does your network and its users’ need? How are their requirements changing? What does UC bring to the party? Will your users take the time to learn how to actually put the new UC tools to use? What are their incentives?

Even the most enthusiastic UC advocates would acknowledge that the apps have yet to reach to edge of the proverbial “chasm,” much less crossed it. But UC is coming, and not just because of vendor push. Many of the recent advances in IT and networking have been bolted on to well-established business processes and, in many cases, while those processes have been marginally improved, they have remained fundamentally unchanged.

For example, the migration to automated voice messaging has not made it easier or more efficient to actually contact the people we need to reach; indeed, these systems have enabled us to hide from one another. With presence and IM, our methods of contacting and responding to one another will fundamentally change-and for the better. It’s not going to be quick and it’s not going to be easy, but change never is.

What do you think? Drop me a line at fknight@cmp.com or here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications eWeekly forum.

Fred Knight
GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Publisher, Business Communications Review

Posted in Applications, Deployment, Fred Knight, Market Trends, Unified Communications |

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