Unified Communications: An Integrator's Dream | Channelnomics

A staple of modern business is communications. A business simply cannot exist without connecting with suppliers, partners and customers. The challenge isn?t having communications, but rather controlling the plethora of communications channels ? telephony, video conferencing, instant messaging, collaboration tools, email, portals and mobile devices, to name a few.

Unified communications holds the promise of bringing all these disparate tools together to make the conveyance of information easier and lead to higher levels of productivity and effectiveness.

The trouble facing the channel: There?s no such thing as a unified communications product despite the fact businesses will spend more than $27 billion on such technology this year.

Reconciling this notion of a huge marketplace and no product was the task given to me by the CompTIA Unified Communications Community, who asked me to speak at its meeting last week in Chicago. Initially, I was going to talk about the evolution of the social enterprise, the use of social tools like Twitter and Facebook in place of telephones and email. I did keep that message, but called an audible at the last minute to expand the discussion to the communications challenges of businesses.

The average business user receives 100 to 125 emails per day. Layer on that the number of phone calls, text messages and tweets, and that?s a lot of communication. But it doesn?t begin to take in the true volume until meetings ? particularly remote meetings facilitated by services such as Citrix GoToMeeting or Cisco Webex ? are taken into consideration. And what about all those documents passed back and forth via email, servers and file sharing services? That?s a form of communication, too.

The volume is simply fantastic, as are the options for delivering and managing these communiques.

While many ?unified communications? vendors offer products that integrate telephony and applications, collaboration and video, instant messaging and social networks, communications and business applications, none offers a product under a ?single pane of glass? with all the communications tools that are easily accessible, usable and affordable.

This isn?t alien to the industry, either. The definition of unified communications spells it out clearly:

?Unified communications is the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging, presence information, telephony, video conferencing, data sharing (including web-connected electronic whiteboards, aka IWB?s or Interactive White Boards), call control and speech recognition with non-real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax). UC is not necessarily a single product, but a set of products that provide a consistent unified user interface and user experience across multiple devices and media types. There have been attempts at creating a single product solution however the most popular solution is dependent on multiple products.? (Thank you, Wikipedia)

And that definition makes unified communications an integrator?s dream. Solution providers can mix and match technologies to create solutions tailored to customers, verticals, market segments and price points. There are so many suppliers ? Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, Polycom, ShoreTel, LifeSize, Adtran, etc. ? that solution providers can literally build systems that use vendor components in systems that become their brand.

The open definition of unified communications makes it a unique platform in which the message isn?t the technology sold into the customer environment, but rather how the technology delivers an outcome desired by the customer. Consider this: A small business says it has unified communications because it has softphones installed on all its PCs alongside, but not integrated with, a third-party instant messaging application. Is that unified communications? A purist would say no, but the simple answer is yes because it meets the customer?s need and budget.

Now, consider the possibilities of open unified communications. A law firm wants a phone system integrated with CRM. The intent is to track all calls and automate billing against accounts, which requires integration with the finance system. And since not all communications are done by phone, email and instant messaging must be integrated into the system, as well. This goes beyond unified communications to integrated business solutions. If you think this is fanciful, guess again. This is a real example provided by a telephony solution provider.

The channel needs to stop thinking of unified communications as a product and start thinking of it as an outcome. By designing systems with independently developed intellectual property that leverages vendor technologies as building blocks, solution providers can create a robust, branded communications solution that advances their customers? productivity and profitability. Now that?s the promise of unified communications.

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