Unified Communications: Adoption, Future and Making it Work

What’s in a Name?
The concept of Unified Communications (UC) has been around for some time, and as the types of communication have evolved, so too has the idea of what UC actually means. Whether you view it as UC, collaboration or a hybrid of both, the fact remains that it can offer an organisation a number of tangible benefits, ranging from having a more productive workforce to reducing infrastructure and technology costs.

The Benefits
The days of having the employees of an organisation all located in the same office building, city, or time zone and working the same hours are, essentially, over. Globalisation and mobilisation of the workforce have resulted in a widespread scattering of workers. Having an effective UC solution and strategy ensures workers can communicate via voice, video, email and IM, in real-time, from different locations and using different devices; making collaboration on projects, ideas and day-to-day operations simpler and more productive. An effective UC solution, provided by one or multiple vendors, should remove the complexity of using sharing applications and streamline the communication process.

While the overriding benefit is employee productivity – enabling staff to work in the way they want to, with the tools they choose and using the communication methods they find most effective – there are other advantages.

An organisation could save on infrastructure and IT costs with fewer physical work stations needed and the adoption of BYOD. Through UC, employees in different locations can set up meetings via video thus negating the need to travel. Not only does the reduction in travel have cost implications, but is more environmentally sound and places less stress on the employee who may travel extensively which cuts into their work / life balance. It also has benefits for other functions of the business, such as human resources. When vetting new employees, interviews can be conducted via video conferencing making the entire recruitment process quicker and smoother; interviews can be more immediate, candidates don’t need to travel, scheduling is easier and interviewers don’t need to be in the same office.

Unified or Optimised?
Some industry players have taken the idea of UC even further, suggesting it has evolved into its next natural state – optimised communications. According to ucstrategies.com, an industry resource on the topic, the idea of optimised communications may be more apt because it focuses on enabling employees to engage with each other, and customers, on a better level, and achieve business goals by using their choice of devices and / or communications tools.

The key then should be less of a focus on unifying communication methods and more of a focus on making them work together.

Making it Work
Paul Cheslaw from AVST noted at the 2013 Unified Communications Expo (now called Connected Business) that interoperability should form the basis of any UC strategy.

“Unified communications is not a technology decision, but a technology journey. And the key to this journey is interoperability, getting everything to work together, multiple technologies, vendors and communications methods.”

Adopting a UC strategy, and indeed getting it to work, is therefore not just an IT decision. It is one that affects the entire organisation and thus requires buy-in from all levels.

UC is therefore not just something for IT to deal with and includes other issues, such as consumerisation of IT, BYOD, flexibility and mobility. The first two issues have changed the way employees want to work and the tools they want to use, essentially shaping the idea of UC itself.

Consumerisation of IT
Individuals are empowered in terms of the technology they use and when at work, they want to use those tools and have their own ideas of how to work more effectively and productively. Organisations should use this attitude to their advantage, recognise the ways in which employees work and add them to UC and collaboration strategies.

At the same event, Steve Blood, Vice President, Gartner, noted that individuals have more disposable income to spend on technology and this has a definite effect on the way they behave at work. “Within the next few years, individuals will spend approximately 3.8 per cent of their disposable income on technology, which is the same as an organisation’s budget. Companies can’t beat them, so they should harness them and apply the ways in which they work to the entire organisation.”

Part of the Whole
UC, when used as part of a larger collaboration programme, can be more successful, especially where there is more of a focus on operational effectiveness as opposed to reducing costs. At Unified Communications Expo in 2013, Gartner’s Steve Blood further noted that there is an opportunity to use UC in an innovative way and look beyond the idea of cost savings. “Through 2016, 70 per cent of organisations that deploy UC as part of a collaboration strategy will meet project objectives of effectiveness.”

He also noted that UC and collaboration are intrinsically linked and recommended that enterprises should pursue a broad UC and Collaboration strategy, but should resist pressure to depend entirely on a single vendor, which can lead to reduced functionality and lack of innovation.

UC and the Data Centre
As customers become more demanding in their adoption of UC and its deployment, flexibility becomes the key issue. UC and the cloud or UC as a Service (UCaaS) can assist in delivering this flexibility. Cloud already incorporates many UC components and one of the benefits, apart from cost-effectiveness, is that organisations may be able to leverage their existing communication infrastructures, such as voice and email. In addition, organisations can fully deploy UC in the cloud, or make use of a hybrid model, choosing which elements work best in the cloud and which will work best using legacy systems.

The Future
Whether an organisation adopts a UC approach or looks forward to embrace optimised communications, the idea of collaboration is driving business objectives and employment efficiency initiatives. In order for a company to capitalise on the potential benefits of UC, it needs to understand the role that UC will play in the future of the organisation before ensuring that it is properly implemented and universally accepted throughout the business.

To understand more on unified communications, collaboration and other topical issues, visit the Connected Business website.

To register for Connected Business, which will take place at Olympia, London on 4 and 5 March, please click here or follow this link http://www.connected-business.co.uk/Register