According to a survey we did of some key CIOs around the country for this
issue, Unified Communications was high on their IT purchase list. This is in
stark contrast to a survey we did in April this year, wherein a majority of the
CIOs said that they had no plans to deploy the same. At that time, the key
hurdle was that UC was still a fairly new concept and difficult to understand.
It's interesting to see such a major shift in this trend in just a few months.
There can be many reasons for this.
One reason is that all the major networking, communications, and even
messaging vendors have entered the UC bandwagon and made a lot of noise around
it throughout this year. This has possibly caused enough curiosity amongst IT
purchase decision makers to understand the concept and its benefits. Another
could be that there is a larger basket of UC solutions available today, which
don't need to be deployed all at once, but in a phased manner. Even we have
carried many stories on UC throughout this year, wherein we've highlighted
various aspects of this hot trend.
The case for UC
So should you move to UC next year? To answer that, let's first understand
the key objective for deploying UC, which is to reach the right person at the
right time and by using the right mode of communication. Next you need to
determine the extent to which you can achieve this objective, i.e. how much time
is being wasted in just trying to reach a person? If it's significant, then that
translates to loss of productivity, which eventually translates to financial
losses.
The story so far: |
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The extent of this problem depends upon your organizational setup and the
number of modes of communication you use. Organizational setup refers to its
geographical spread, whether it has offices in different time zones, etc.
It also refers to the number of mobile users, where all they travel, and what
all do they carry with them (laptop, cellphone, data card, etc). The number of
communication modes is self-explanatory, and today there are so many of them.
There's voice communications through landlines, PBXs, mobiles, voice messengers,
IP phones and audio conferencing; text messaging through IMs, mobiles, and
email, data sharing through collaboration tools like interactive whiteboards;
video conferencing and so on. However, they're all in their own islands and not
integrated. UC provides a way to integrate them so that you know the best way to
reach the other party. It saves time as well as money, so it does make sense to
consider a move towards it. However, there are a number of issues that must be
addressed before that. Two key ones are interoperability and security.
Interoperability amongst UC devices
The entry point into UC for any enterprise begins with a migration to IP
telephony, an IP PBX or a voicemail solution. For most organizations, legacy
PBXs are reaching end-of-life and most messaging solutions need to be upgraded
to some form of unified messaging. However, for migration most companies prefer
open standards like SIP and SIMPLE which are gaining popularity over H.323 that
was widely used in major IP PBXs. Using open standards ensures interoperability
amongst solutions from different vendors. This is especially crucial in cases
where enterprises go for best of breed solutions from all the major players.
Cisco's IP telephony, unified messaging, mobility and audio conferencing
solutions are more popular while IBM and Microsoft are preferred for email,
instant messaging and Web conferencing. And with the number of players in UC
space rising constantly, interoperability amongst them is important so that any
devices you might add in future integrate properly.
Given this scenario next year would see a major push from enterprises to the
large vendors for a possible federation amongst them to ensure that various
vendor platforms work seamlessly together to foster greater acceptability for UC
solutions.
The Road Ahead |
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Security issues
Since VoIP is an integral part of a UC setup, you must first understand
where you stand as far as your VoIP implementation goes. Have you already moved
to VoIP, or are you planning to? Whichever the case, one of the key things to
worry about these days is VoIP security.
The number of VoIP vulnerabilities is growing by leaps and bounds, and need
to be understood before you venture into UC. For instance, there are
vulnerabilities that could disable your IP phones and freely available tools are
available to eavesdrop on VoIP conversations. In the past, we have managed to
render an IP PBX useless by attacking it in our lab.
We've even used an ordinary packet sniffer to capture an entire VoIP
conversation. This was not as big a problem with traditional digital PBXs, but
as one moves to IP, the associated bag and baggage of vulnerabilities comes
along with it. One good site for checking out VoIP vulnerabilities is www.sipera.
com. The site keeps a look out for VoIP vulnerabilities and how to handle them.
On the move UC
The purpose of having a UC solution does not get fulfilled unless all kinds
of communication platforms get integrated in a more seamless manner. In this
context, your IP PBX should have the ability to provide a virtual handshake
between fixed and mobile telecom networks. This is not just limited to
forwarding your office calls to mobile phones but you need to also have a
'Presence' mechanism built-in so that the UC application would automatically
forward a call or a message to the mobile recipient without requiring him to
manually configure his preferred medium of communication at a particular time.
Look at how unified messaging (UM) has enhanced mobility offered by smart
phones. You get voicemails delivered on your smart phone, so you don't need to
log into your corporate account again and again. Same applies to how we take
calls on mobile phones. A UC solution would make this experience more fruitful
through the use of Presence technology that identifies an individual as soon as
he connects to a network.
The technology is part of 3G wireless networks and is employed across a
variety of mobile communication devices such as cell phones, laptops, PDAs, etc.
IETF's Instant Messaging and Presence Protocol (IMPP) is meant to establish
standards that make the various Presence technologies interoperable for seamless
connectivity to the mobile worker.
UC solutions from major vendors |
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Communications as a Service
Communications-as-a-Service, or CaaS, as the name suggests is a logical
extension to the SaaS model with hosted UC solutions on a service provider's
network. IP telephony hardware is hosted at the third-party data center and the
user is provided access to assets on a monthly rental basis. Analogous to issues
in owning expensive software, this model would grow as soon as companies realize
the cost and risk associated with owning an in-house communications system. The
market is expected to grow to a total of $251.9 million by the end of the year,
according to Gartner and is expected to wallop to $2.3 billion by 2011. However,
there's a lack of focus amongst vendors in the packaging and marketing of the
service. So, expect some action in this space in the year 2008 as the picture
for owning UC solutions becomes clearer. In fact, there is considerable
enthusiasm amongst vendors in pushing CaaS because they eye an opportunity to
bundle newer features and capabilities within a single solution and avoid
commoditization of the UC market.