UC:The Way Forward

PCQuest organized a round table discussion in Mumbai with a few key CIOs over

breakfast. agenda: to understand the way forward with Unified Communication. We

wanted to identify key issues that are hampering enterprise productivity and how

can UC be the answer. The event kicked off with a briefing on enterprise

communications strategies by the PCQuest Editor, wherein highlighted how digital

communication has gained relevance post the slowdown, because most organizations

have slashed their travel budgets. It therefore made sense for CIOs to enhance

their enterprise communications infrastructure, and move to unified one. The

attendees were Ali Mahadik, Sr. Manager - IT, PAM Pharmaceutical & Allied

Machinery; Atul Kumar, President - ET and A, Ispat India; Rajiv Sharaf, Addl

VP-IT, Reliance Energy; Fariborz P. Zaigar AM-IT, Rallis India, Zoeb Adenwala

CIO (Global), Essel Propack, J Ramesh, GM—IT, Mirc Electronics

UC: Trends & Innovations



The next session was by Kiran Kumar, Practice Head-UC from Wipro, who provided a
complete walk-through of the latest trends and innovations in Unified

Communication. Most CIOs today have a good understanding of IP based

communication, IP telephony, etc, said Kiran. That's why he stressed on some of

the essential components of a UC solution. Presented here are the key ones.

Goodbye multiple PBXs, Hello IP PBX



The benefit having a UC infrastructure is that you don't require a new PBX for
every new site or office you setup. This is possible thanks to IP PBXs. They

also help you scale up. You might have 4-5 new sites today, but tomorrow you

could add more, and even have global presence. In such a case, having a central

IP PBX will ensure that all your users register to it. Quoting the example of

Infosys, Kiran said that the organization has around 50K IP phones registering

into a single PBX. This makes it easy to manage from one central location. Plus,

the same PBX has been mirrored across other locations for high-availability. In

case the main PBX fails, the mirrored one takes over seamlessly.

Smarphones as your telephone extension



End points are another key element of UC. This comprises of IP hard phones,
wireless IP phones, and softphones. Now, even hand held devices with WiFi are

becoming end-points, because softphones have been created for them. So a Nokia

smartphone or a Blackberry could become an extension of your PBX. You could use

your smartphone as your telephone extension without having to dial into the GSM

network. Not only that, but the mobile client will also allow users to access

their corporate directory search, find out the 'presence' of another user, see

the conferences and meetings lined up for him, etc all over GPRS. One point to

note here is that GPRS and GSM won't work together, i.e. if a user finds another

person from the corporate directory and clicks on call, then that call would be

made through GSM. Possibly once 3G kicks in, even this call would be made over

IP, and not GSM.

'Read' your Voice Mail



Seeing voice mail in your email box is another feature of UC. Earlier, a user
would have to listen to all voice mails serially, as a result of which voice

mail didn't really gain popularity. By integrating it with email, users can see

all voice mail messages in one go, and choose to listen to more important ones.

The same functionality is available on handhelds as well.

Single Number Reach



This is especially meant for those sales guys who're never on their seat. With
this, whenever a customer calls, both the desk phone and mobile phone of the

sales person ring. The sales guy could seamlessly disconnect the call on one

phone and shift to the other. The PBX will automatically transfer the call. This

feature is device independent. A thing to note here is that when the call goes

on the mobile phone, it's the PBX that automatically dials out to it. So the

organization has to decide between higher communication cost and the convenience

of having mobility.

UC is the logical way forward



What followed Kiran's presentation was a very animated discussion amongst the
six CIOs who were present in the round table. Several key aspects emerged from

the discussion.

While everyone agreed that a UC infrastructure was the logical way forward,

there was a lot of debate over the approach. One thought was that since a

unified communications infrastructure would combine telecom and data networks,

there would be one single type of cabling within the premise. This would require

lesser manpower to deploy or even manage it later. “Whether or not UC can reduce

the infrastructure management and deployment is still a debatable issue”, said Atul Kumar, President, ET & A, Ispat Industries. He said that the cost of

upgrading the infrastructure itself to be UC ready is significant. So you have

to draw a balance between continuing with your existing infrastructure for

communication, or upgrading to UC. He said that before you can even dream of

having UC, you first have to look at your desktop integration; and then ensure

that the application and network architectures are in place. Then, the real time

applications have to be in place. According to Atul, IP Telephony is not even

10% of UC. There's much more to it than that, and many of applications used in

UC, like video conferencing are time sensitive. Therefore, the network must be

ready to support such real-time applications.

Kiran agreed with this and said that many customers look at an integrated

infrastructure when they come up with a new setup. They try and ensure that this

can inter-operate with their existing infrastructure, so that users can

seamlessly talk to each other. Later, as the system is up for renewal, the

customer decides whether to increase the IP penetration into the setup or not.

Clearly understand your requirement



UC is not 'one size fits all'. Therefore it's important that CIOs have a clear
understanding of what they'd like to achieve with UC. It has to deliver what the

organization wants. “Many times, organizations don't know what they want unless

you tell them that this is also a possible route.” said Atul.

Another valid point was raised by Rajeev Sharaf, Addl VP -IT, Reliance

Infrastructure. He said that STD calls today are so cheap that an organization

may not get the motivation to spend so much on UC. Zoeb Adenwala, Global CIO

Essel Propack also said that UC is a call of every organization, and depends

upon the usage. “But it's difficult to justify spending on UC”, he said. In

today's world (read economic slowdown affected world), most CEOs say, shoot down

projects that don't give ROI in less then 3 months, or have a large capex

requirement. 'In UC types of projects, it's very difficult to quantify the

benefits', he added. And therefore they take a backseat.

How to build the case for it?



How do you justify a move to UC? Moreover, added Rajeev, that after having taken
this solution, after 3-4 years, you have to go for a version upgrade. This

increases cost, whereas a traditional PBX runs for 15 years, which is what

appeals more to the CEO. How do you therefore justify spending on UC?

The answer here is that it depends how clearly the requirement has been

defined? What's the scope of work involved? This clarity is very important to

justify UC. Another point raised by Anil Chopra, Editor PCQuest was that “in

order to get the RoI, the users have to be made to understand the real value of

UC”. Today, nobody questions the RoI for Email, he said. Because everyone

realizes its importance. The same sort of justification has to be made for UC.

To this, Kiran added that “you have to identify the small thing that can

change the way you work, instead of thinking of fancy things”. Atul also agreed

that UC has become more of a need, but one should be able to touch and feel its

benefits. “How will my life be simpler with UC?”, he said. Today if there's a

major problem with your DataCenter, you can be informed about it. You don't have

to physically go to the data center to fix it. So while this might have made you

a 24x7 employee, at least it let's you do things remotely. UC will only enhance

this sort of working.