Unified Communications:
There are two main sections of this white paper. The first section is based on an industry discussion between Mr. Nick Lippis, President Lippis Enterprises and Mr. Zeus Kerravala, Senior Vice President of The Yankee Group’s Enterprise Research, aimed at providing the reader with a common understanding of the largest change taking place in communications since the internet: Unified Communications and Communications-Enabled Business Process. The second section is based on an interview between Mr. Lippis and Mr. Jorge Blanco, Avaya’s Vice President of Solutions & Software Portfolio Management discussing Avaya’s investments, vision and value proposition to IT organizations as they consider Unified Communications and Communications-Enabled Business Process.
In this white paper we provide an industry definition of Unified Communications (UC) and its associated value to corporations. We present the concept that UC is a communication portal which unifies access to a wide range of siloed communication applications such as IM, e-mail, voice, chat, conferencing and collaboration tools. Parallel to UC is the development of communications- enabled business process which injects communications capabilities into business operations to reduce human and system delay associated with workflow. We propose that UC will be the key enduser interface which unifies communications and upon which communicationsenabled processes are delivered to and massively consumed by users.
We offer IT staff the following recommendations as they consider UC as an important part of their overall IT strategy to drive business value.
Key IT Staff Recommendations:
1. Before deploying UC, IT staff should assess the readiness of real time communication flows across their IP network infrastructure.
2. UC deployments will be multi-vendor, therefore, insure that your chosen vendor is committed to working with other key industry players and standards organizations.
3. Most UC deployments will be built upon their IP telephony software, therefore, insure that your IP telephony vendor has a strong UC commitment and can execute against their UC vision.
4. As communications enablement will have a profound impact on business operations, we suggest that your chosen UC vendor have a strong commitment, strategy and communications-enablement product roadmap.
5. There is no need to wait for some industry event before starting to deploy UC solutions; there is enough mature technology for IT staff to start now.
6. Consider UC pilots within workgroups and business units before wide spread deployments.
7. For global 2000 concerns, professional services will play an important role in UC deployments. For these firms consider adding additional weight in selecting a UC vendor with a significant and proven professional services organization which can deliver a range of design, planning, implementation, management and monitoring services.
8. Consider developing a ROI (Return on Investment) and a TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) UC model for your organization as industry standards have not emerged. Individual productivity advances in the range of 15% to 20% have been attributed to UC. These figures should be independently calculated for your organization.
9. Expand your thinking of UC beyond the desktop to include mobile devices, laptops plus all modes and modalities of communications and where they take place. In essence the UC experience should be independent of workplace environment.
10. CIOs should consider creating a Chief Communications Officer (CCO) position tasked with the architecture development and oversight of unified communication and communications-enabled business process projects. The Chief Communications Officer should have dotted line responsibility with business unit managers and review input.
1.2 Unified Communications Defined
Many companies are using the term Unified Communications (UC) to describe different things. Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications. Some use UC to describe communications-enabled business process. Some use UC to describe both. To enable the most complete understanding of the value of UC, this paper will address the broadest definition encompassing both of these aspects.
Unified communications can be thought of as a super-set of IP-based communications. IP-based tools, such as web conferencing, audio conferencing, and video conferencing, unified messaging and instant messaging, have been around for a while. Unified communications is the super-set of all of these tools accessed through a unified method. That is, access to people and information is managed through one interface; no longer does the user need to have separate tools to drive separate communication applications.
