Unified Communications

Business communications often fail to keep pace with the demand for real-time communications to address mission-critical business needs. Unified communications offers new flexibility and manageability across multimodal applications to deliver unprecedented levels of connection for the distributed workforce. They unravel communication bottlenecks, tie together applications with a simple user interface, and support closer collaboration across the enterprise. Unified communications also provides a competitive differentiator by enabling employees to reach others more quickly and eliminate delays caused by the inability to reach key decision-makers. It’s also critical because if enterprises don’t understand what UC consists of, then they won’t know what they need, and therefore may not utilize all the available collaborative tools efficiently and effectively. Rate of VoIP/ telephony deployments has slowed, as a result of unforeseen challenges and perhaps, not enough value for the upfront costs of deploying VoIP/IP telephony. Those enterprises that have taken the initiative have left it in the testing phase, and those who have not taken the initiative, have given it thought, but not moving forward. As a result, IP telephony is at a standstill. UC may be the catalyst that VoIP/IP telephony needs to reach mass adoption.

Thus to analyze the market driver technology we need to go through the current market situation and analyse it from both perspective, first was from the Vendors perspective which help in understanding the vendors approach towards UC and their further vision towards UC and the second was from the Competitors perspective which helped in understanding that how other competitors are positioning themselves in this technology and their value proposition and selling points in UC which further helped in positioning a company in the UC market with unique selling points and recommending a commending further for its UC strategy.

To position a company and come up with UC strategy, it is important to go through both secondary and primary resources. Secondary reports and articles are considered to determine market size and doing competitors analysis of various system integrators in focus whereas through primary source information from the companies Business Units involved in UC helps in understanding their functioning, business and their further plans in this technology. This helps in understanding a companies approach towards UC and gaps which it has in this technology.

Now, talking about where the part of the problem is where vendors are confusing the market. Example on one side, we have the traditional infrastructure vendors, who are basing their UC platforms on VoIP/IPT, indicating that VoIP is the foundation of UC. On the other side of the camp, we have the non-traditional vendors, who believe VoIP/IPT is just another application on a UC platform. In their case, presence is really the foundation of a UC platform. The presence engine is the place from which all modes of communications can be launched. Neither one is right nor wrong, although each would like to say the other is inadequate The fact is that enterprises have different needs and requirements. Some enterprises would prefer to have their modes of communication be based on voice; others are more comfortable communicating through presence, and use voice as a secondary and tertiary form of communication. The good news for enterprises is that there is an option for everyone. There may even be instances in which traditional and non-traditional may have to share and co-habitate.. We are still a long way from making that co-habitation seamless, and interoperability still has strides to make. This nirvana is only as impossible as vendors make it. It’s time all learn to play in the same sandbox if we want to see UC take off. Ultimately both primary and secondary resource helped in positioning in UC and to recommend a company further for UC strategy.

POSTED BY : NEHA SAXENA