Why UC is Destined to Take Off
July 28th, 2010I’m often asked about whether I believe unified communications (UC) is a passing trend, or if it’s here to stay. UC consists of a variety of elements or components that we currently use in order to do our day-to-day jobs, but integrates these elements to provide more value and consistency, while adding functions such as presence, as well as a consistent user interface.
UC will be the way in which we communicate in the future, but it may not be called UC, and it may not be a “market” like the switching market or the messaging market (remember when computer telephony integration was the killer market?), but it will indeed be the future of enterprise and SMB (and even consumer) communications.
Eventually we’ll come up with a better name, and as my colleague Jim Burton points out, “In the long term, we will refer to all of this as simply communications. We will continue to describe each component as we do today: phone calls, IM, email, etc., but, as people become accustomed to what we are now calling unified communications, things will start to blend together just as handheld devices are starting to do.”
The expectation that UC is a single product is erroneous – UC is a solution made up of various products and capabilities that fall along what I call the “UC Continuum.” Applications like unified messaging and enterprise mobility are on the UC continuum, while call control and IP telephony are also included along the continuum, but are not the end all-be all of UC. The ultimate goal, or the top of the UC continuum, is “communications integrated to optimize business processes” – tightly integrating the UC components and capabilities with vertical and horizontal applications and specific business processes to help companies be more productive. But you can still have UC capabilities along the way to this ultimate goal.
Speaking with end users, it becomes clear that the concept of “unifying everything” is overwhelming, and out of reach for most enterprises today. Remember – you can start small and build up to UC, while leveraging the systems and technology you have in place today. And look for the pockets of users that can benefit the most from UC capabilities – roll out UC where it makes the most sense, and build on from there.
There’s one major caveat regarding the success of UC – UC will succeed if and only if customers implement it such a way as to transform the way in which they do business. Without making changes to the way in which you use communication technology, UC will flop. Organizations must carefully evaluate how they’ll be using UC and make sure that it’s used only where and how it makes sense.
Make no mistake, UC is here today.
Blair Pleasant
COMMfusion LLC & UCStrategies.com
www.ucstrategies.com



