One of the favourite questions for the industry I work in is; ‘What does UC mean?’ or ’How should we define it?’ I’m not a big supporter of such questions, mostly because I dislike most of the answers. More importantly the question also misses the point of what we as an industry should be attempting to provide. We shouldn’t be focused on defining terminology, we should focus on the communication capability of an organisation; ‘How can we improve our communication capability?’ or ‘What makes my business stronger?’ are for me much more relevant questions. Before I can answer such questions I always like to understand the existing estate by taking a baseline and evaluating where an organisation is with their communication estate, what can and can’t they provide:
- Make calls to landlines and mobiles with high reliability, quality and meeting regulatory requirements
- Voicemail accessible from anywhere
- An Audio Conferencing service
- Share instant messages
- Have 1 on 1 and multiparty video conferencing
- Host a web conference with the ability to share desktop and content (including interactive content such as videos), potentially to hundreds of people
- Up to date and immediate presence availability for all users
- Integration into the office applications – not just simply Microsoft but also other systems
- To do all of the above with both internal and external users without any need for heavy configuration
- To be able to do the above on any PC/iOS/Android /HTML5 device, accessed on the corporate network and on a users home machine
- Integrate and extend into an existing communication system to allow for a gradual migration
- Integrate into internet communication platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Skype
- Users should not need to enter multiple systems/accounts
- Business agility – how easy is it to open a new office
- The system should contribute to a reducing business administration cost base
- The underlying network should support good quality voice and video communication
- Users should have access and can be contacted on a global basis
I’d be interested to know if you think I have missed anything from the above, if so let me know.
If your company system can provide all of the above then you shouldn’t care what it is called, just give yourself a pat on the back and keep providing the fantastic level of service. If however you are like most orgainsations and some way away from achieving all of the above take a step back and evaluate where you are. The chances are you will be in the process of procuring a communication technology, such as PBX, Video or Audio Conferencing. Just make sure you demand of yourself that the system you are buying can get you on the right path, because if not you will continue to provide a fragmented, overly complex and costly communication estate while one of your competitors is doing something different.
Please note not a single mention of Cloud, specific vendors or interoperability/open standards. Cloud is not a feature nor a capability; it is a delivery mechanism that can and should be factored into the cost and reliability evaluation – it is also a phrase that has been warped by our industry to become an almost useless and meaningless phrase. The same applies also for interoperability and open standards, they are used in so many different ways they become empty words when used within our industry. It is interesting to me as well that people who lack knowledge or experience of the communication industry often rely on such buzz words as crutches to sell a particular piece of technology – listen for the words carefully they are quite a good way of filtering people out who don’t really understand what they are selling/saying…
Whether you have missed anything from the potential UC feature list is irrelevant.
For UC to be of benefit, it needs to deliver the features that provide business value for a specific organization. Otherwise UC becomes the same as the “old PBX” that has 702 features but does not improve business efficiency.
I agree with your assesment of Cloud. Cloud is a “How”. It is important to first focus on, define and document the “What”. Once “What” is known you can then evaluate the various options such as on-premise, in the cloud, hybrid, etc.
Here is a somewhat lengthy but I think relevant article that discusses how to evaluate various solution approaches: http://www.nojitter.com/post/231300501/the-goldilocks-approach-7-steps-to-get-to-just-right
Kevin Kieller
No Jitter Author – http://www.nojitter.com
UC Strategies Expert – http://www.ucstrategies.com
Hi Simon,
Great post. Of course, evaluating UC in this way – “how can we make our business stronger” – opens a whole new can of worms about business processes, customer service etc – so does that mean you need to add integration with CRM packages, and what about user accountability/dialogue tracing, where all comms across different media are pulled together in one portal for review by the user and their superiors?
If we start thinking in these terms, it becomes much more complex. No wonder that most media outlets, and the vendors, keep asking the question over and over!
I agree with everything you say, apart from that you mention about integration, but then disregard open standards as an empty phrase. I find that a little tricky to accept.
I do absolutely agree that there’s a good number of “big” vendors out there (they know who they are!) that claim to be open when really, they’ve purposely made it utterly difficult to integrate anything – i.e It might talk SIP, but interop is many hours of configuration away. That certainly cheapens the phrase, and the idea, of interop.
However, I think open standards are pretty much essential if you’re ever going to find a solution that meets all of your requirements. Business processes and needs vary too much – waiting on one vendor to bring out the perfect solution for you just isn’t going to work for the vast majority.
Furthermore, without open standards, integration with existing systems becomes jolly expensive and ultimately, if “proprietary by design” continues to be mantra for most vendors then it’s going to stifle innovation.
I guess with any solution, no matter whether the words the vendor uses to describe it are cliche or not, you’ve always got to keep your sceptic hat on and challenge them at every turn. Good sport if nothing else
The above list needs to be rated/ranked along supply and demand parameters. Ask yourself, “Does UC exist from a supply persective or a demand perspective? A user or controller perspective? Who is the originator and terminator?” The concept of UC is flawed when you look at your 3 layer model (service provisioning axis) and add 2 additional axii; namely a geographic dispersion and a network/application dispersion. Then you have a framework from which to map various communication sessions and put them into their respective user contexts.
Thanks Simon; that is a very timely list – I’m trying to help the COO (there is no CIO) at a 200-person enterprise understand that this stuff is all interlinked, and that they really need a long-term strategy instead of panic-replacing PBXs at branches as they expire and throwing random Video Conferencing equipment into a couple of sites if they actually want a Return on Investment. They don’t know any of the terminology and I like the idea of dropping the loaded industry jargon to concentrate on explaining what is possible before teasing out their actual requirements.