Unified Communication is still being deployed slowly

The Unified Communication (UC) technology has attracted a lot of attention. This is largely due to the vendor's promotion of their Unified Communication solution. These vendors have advertised that their solutions can effectively solve the contact problems between employees and colleagues, business partners, and customers in the rapidly growing mobile commerce field.

Although this technology only benefits a few companies that deploy unified communications, experts say that unified communication is still evolving, manufacturers need to do more work to integrate many of their products.

To be accurate, Unified Communication depends on who defines it. All in all, it includes real-time communication functions such as telephone (including IP addresses), video conferencing, instant communication, remote presentation, and data sharing, as well as non-real-time services such as voice mail, email, unified messaging and fax.

Unified Communication often involves multiple product components that provide a unified user interface and experience across devices and media types. In other functions, it allows users to connect to different devices through the same phone number and receive information on the media he/she chooses.

The concept behind the technology is to optimize communication and collaboration so that employees can easily stay in touch with each other and improve work efficiency and productivity.

Industry observers believe that despite the bright prospects, the deployment of this technology is growing slowly.

"We have not seen significant growth in the number of companies deploying unified communications," said Robin Gareiss, executive vice president of the Nemertes Research Group, a research and consulting firm ." According to a survey conducted by the company, only 4.4% of the companies fully deployed unified communications.

Gareiss said two key issues led to slow deployment. One problem is that it is difficult for the company to establish an "excellent" business case for Unified Communication. It is difficult for another vendor to integrate multiple Unified Communication components.

As it involves many components, it is very difficult to determine the cost of Unified Communication. "The cost depends on how you define unified communication ." Gareiss said. "What applications are included? Are they fully integrated into wired and wireless devices? The biggest unplanned overhead is integration costs and training/marketing of users and management tools ."

Don Van Doren, head of UniComm Consulting, said unified communication can be deployed in an incremental manner without significant infrastructure changes. The company can purchase unified communication capabilities and licenses as needed. "This means that the cost saved in earlier improvements can be used to fund subsequent application deployment," he said ."

Despite the slow overall growth in the market, unified communications has raised hopes for many companies, Gareiss said.

In fact, many believe that the rise of mobile communication will stimulate the demand for Unified Communication. You need to integrate different devices so that devices of different types and brands can be connected anytime and anywhere. Analytics company Info-Tech research group has recently published mobility as a key factor in the Unified Communication score card.

Successful Unified Communication

Companies deploying unified communications are gaining results. Underwriters Laboratories (UL), a world-independent product security certification company, deployed a unified communication platform two years ago, including components from Microsoft, HP, and Avaya.

Tom Boxrud, IT Director at UL's global operations, said they wanted to improve the company's communication and collaboration capabilities while upgrading the old communication and network infrastructure.

As part of the upgrade, the company has deployed Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007 R2 unified communication platform, it integrates timely messages, videos, audios, network meetings, and remote presentations into Microsoft Office. The company also deployed Avaya's VoIP telephone system and network infrastructure components such as HP switches.

"Our existing technology is outdated. In addition, we are in a transitional period. One of our goals is to improve communication and collaboration with our customers ." Boxrud.

In addition, the company wants to cut business travel costs, shorten the project cycle, and be more flexible in the market. "We regard Unified Communication as a key tool to achieve these goals ." Boxrud. At present, the company is switching to the latest Unified Communication solution Microsoft Lync.

Boxrud says UL wants to cut communication costs by 50% due to the use of unified communication and VoIP. Most of the savings come from reducing the cost of long-distance calls in their global offices. In addition, UL cut its operating costs by 30% and integrated nearly 40 email servers around the world into a cloud-based email system.

Boxrud said that since the deployment of unified communications, collaboration between facilities in North America, Europe and Asia has become easier and cheaper. "When we test products, people familiar with testing products may be in Asia, while testing employees may be in North America. Now, you only need to click the button to bring the staff involved in the test to a point-to-point presentation or network meeting ." He said.

However, the deployment of Unified Communication also faces some challenges. For example, many employees in the company need to face cultural transformation because many employees have never used the advanced functions provided by unified communication.

Boxrud said: "We have many old cultural traditions. The key to the overall deployment of Unified Communication is a good internal recommendation, communication and training activity. Through our internal websites and self-service tools, employees can learn how to use the Unified Communication function ."

Companies should gradually use the Unified Communication function instead of using it all at once, so as to minimize resistance. "We have made a lot of feedback and surveys on how employees feel about these tools," he said. Many employees have never used video functions before ."

In terms of investment recovery, Boxrud said UL hopes that its Unified Communication technology and network upgrade will receive a return on investment within three years. "This is almost exactly the same as our expectation," he said ."