Technology : conquering communications complexity

 

"There are just so many communications channels these days, and many of them are being driven by consumer innovations," says Michael Schellenberg, head of converged telephony competency at Orange Business Services. "It is common to find Skype on directors' desktops and employees using Facebook. It would be wrong to assume they are doing it for play. They're bringing these tools in because they enhance their working processes."

 

This complexity is encouraging many companies to look to the concept of unified communications (UC) as a way of not just simplifying matters but giving users powerful new ways to collaborate. UC can include elements of presence, instant messaging, IP telephony, audio conferencing, web conferencing, data collaboration, unified messaging, mobile communications and video conferencing, most accessible through a single client interface or within an embedded application interface. In-Stat and Wainhouse Research estimate that unified communications market will be worth around $48 billion by 2012.

 

"The way in which individuals communicate and collaborate in the business setting has changed dramatically in the last few years, but we are just on the cusp of even more dramatic change. Employees will increasingly have intuitive tools that allow them to control communications and presence, while expanding their access to critical information," says David Lemelin, an analyst with In-Stat.

 

 

Roughly speaking, communications fit into three categories: telephony, which includes traditional phone calls, audio conferencing and video telephony; mobile communications, including voice or IP, texting, MMS, push to talk and integrated PDAs, and the IT domain, which typically comprises messaging-based tools such as email, IM, document sharing, web conferencing and forums. Increasing this latter category features applications brought in from outside the organization such as Skype, Facebook, wikis and LinkedIn.

 

During the course of a day, an employee could use a dozen different ways to communicate. "Each of these channels has its own interface, log on, passwords, directory and so on. There can be as many interfaces as channels," adds Schellenberg. "That can hardly be considered efficient."

 

The ultimate goal of UC is to unite these channels in a single interface, though this may be unrealistic for many organizations with disparate platforms. Already great steps can be made to bring the fixed and mobile worlds together, with converged devices such as Orange's Uniq, single numbers that work with a mobile handset or desk phone, or extending PBX functionality to mobile handsets. The convergence of real time telephony with messaging is also maturing very quickly: screen pops, click to dial, voice mails notifications in the email and, most usefully, IP and telephony presence information.

 

"Our most important advice is to move towards standardization and consolidation," explains Schellenberg. "If you have a single telephony environment and a single messaging / desktop environment, it is pretty easy to integrate them. But it's an impossible task if you have multiple telephony platforms and standalone servers for instant messaging, email and conferencing."

 

"You can't realistically swap out all of your legacy phone switches, email servers and conferencing services overnight. But you need a strategy that works towards a group-wide common platform even if it takes five years," Schellenberg adds.

 

 

Instant messaging may be the environment that unites many of these channels. Gartner predicts that by the end of 2011, IM will be the de facto tool for voice, video, and text chat and by 2013, 95% of workers in multinationals will use IM as their primary interface for real-time communications. Instant messaging systems have become a key part of the collaboration infrastructure and are increasingly displacing voice calls and emails to pre-planned meetings and video conferences.

 

"Although consumer IM use has been predominant in business, we expect penetration levels for enterprise grade IM to rise from around 25 per cent currently to nearly 100 per cent by the end of the decade," said David Mario Smith, research analyst at Gartner. "The ability to connect people in disparate locations by text, voice and video in one application is incredibly powerful and is equally well suited to an informal 'water cooler' atmosphere as well as more formal group communications."

 

"Email is an excellent and unique tool that has, in recent years, been misused and above all overused," Smith adds. "It was never intended for real-time, snappy communications but for the conveyance of more detailed, less transitory content. IM excels at real-time communication and this is why it sits so happily alongside email at the core of the communications and collaboration architecture of the future."

 

Schellenberg cautions companies to be careful about simply swapping out consumer tools and imposing corporate applications with less functionality or that can only be used inside the company. "The boundaries in our life are blurring," he says. "We work closer with suppliers and customers. Employees reside more and more outside corporate offices and we talk to our friends and family at work. A lot of these consumer communications technologies are brought into the office because people want a simple solution to communicate with everyone, irrespective of their locations or whether they are inside or outside of the organization"

 

Although standardization of communications platforms is an important pre-requisite for unified communications, companies need to do it sensitively and ensure that their employees' needs are met. Fortunately solutions such as Microsoft's Office Communications Server allow companies to incorporate popular consumer IM services into their corporate environment. After all, the goal for unified communication is not just to reduce enterprise complexity and cost, but to also help employees carry out their work more effectively.