What is Unified Communication?

By: Dominik Schulte-Zurhausen, Marketing Manager, Tellumat Telecoms

To attempt to define the term ‘Unified Communication’ is to open up a hornets nest of endless, yet needless discussion around the semantics. My view is quite a simple one in that unified communication (UC) is just that:
UC is a unified methodology to aggregate the communication requirements of an organization and its stakeholders. As such, UC attempts to presents an integrated communication interface to all stakeholders of the business in today’s rapidly evolving environment.

This is quite a mouthful, so let us break it down a little:
The word ‘unified’, in this context, means to a have a single, integrative and cohesive means to communicate and collaborate with all stakeholders of the business.
The word ‘communication’, in this context means any and all communication media available to the business. These media being voice, video, mail, web, IM and fax etc.

As such, UC attempts to provide a seamless, intuitive, personalized and unified communication interface to all stakeholders. These stakeholders can take the shape and form of internal staff, external staff, customers and suppliers. The view is that different stakeholders utilize different communication media, tools and devices in different situations throughout their day. Thus, UC attempts to integrate the applicable media resources under a presence-aware interface that is intuitive, customizable, personalized, device agnostic and easy to use.

In light of the fact that UC`s low level purpose is to present all communication media channels in an integrated manner to the end user, UC products can then be defined to be those technology artifacts (hardware, software and processes) which support the underlying media and allows for integration into a single user interface that allows for enhanced collaboration and improved business process structures. UC solutions are then not stand alone products, but rather suites of incorporated tools that enable the business and the individual to integrate their communication requirements.

The idea of UC has been around for over a decade, but it is only recently that UC has become a viable and practical business tool. According to Gartner 2008, the two main trends which have lead to this sudden acceptance and interest are:

• The proliferation of IP networking throughout the enterprise and telecommunication carriers.
  
• The capability of software applications to provide all communication requirements via off-the-shelf (OTS) computing hardware and delivery of data via IP packets to the end user device.
  

Of course in South Africa and many other developing nations around the world, the constantly reducing cost of bandwidth has also given a dramatic rise to the demand and interest for UC solutions based on IP networking.

The key technologies in providing UC are:

• Real-time transactions such as voice and video calls via fixed, mobile or soft phones
  
• Live collaboration using voice, video and web conferencing with options for application sharing
  
• Instant messaging (IM) based communication for peers and groups alike
  
• Delayed messaging such as e-mail, voice-mail, sms/mms, fax based communication
  
• Multi-endpoint (endpoint agnostic) support such as desktops, laptops, phones and mobile phones
  
• Value added applications that allow for presence management, directory services, skills based routing, personal assistants, CEBP (through API and/or service interfaces and tools that facilitate the integration of business application with communication)
  
• Wireless technologies supporting voice and data mobility (DECT, IP-DECT, WiFi, WiMax, GSM, UMTS, Pico-Cell etc) with options for transparent handover
  
• Least cost routing over a variety of media channels
  

The theory is that a properly deployed and leveraged UC solution will increase the efficiency as well as the effectiveness of an organization in today’s rapidly evolving business climate.

What is not Unified Communications?

UC is not a one vendor solution approach to a business` communication requirement, or even a once of investment in new communication technology. It is not VoIP in isolation; VoIP is just one of the tools. UC is not a PBX sitting in a back office or a server sitting on a rack.
In fact, UC communication is not even a true stand-alone technology in itself.

UC is just this:
A systematic and ongoing methodology which aims to harness the inherent benefits that a plethora of current and future communication technologies can provide to business` and individual end users alike.

To wrap up

UC is a methodology that loosely hints at an ongoing process of applying associated suites of communication technology tools that when properly integrated with well defined and robust business processes and existing business applications can deliver exceptional organizational efficiency and effectiveness improvements when compared to competing enterprises that do not leverage such technologies .