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Unified Communications

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

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.

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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:
  • SIP has overtaken H.323 to emerge as the

    favorite standard in UC devices.
  • Major vendors are offering tools to enable





    convergence and tie communications into business processes.
  • There has been a paradigm shift from VoIP

    to CoIP (Communications over IP) which means loading all kinds of

    communications over your IP network.
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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.

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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
  • All communication applications would

    integrate with email, calendar and directories to ease contact and

    information sharing throughout the organization.
  • A mix of hardware IP PBXs and software UC

    clients from major vendors would be deployed.
  • Similar to Saas, expect Communications as

    a Service to pick up in a big way as companies try to cut down on

    infrastructure costs through hosted solutions.
  • Users would be able to check all types of

    messages from a unified e-mail inbox, Web browser or mobile device,

    anywhere on the network.
  • Companies would prefer open standards such

    as SIP and SIMPLE to improve on interoperability than H.323, which is

    still widely in use amongst major PBX and IP PBXs.
  • Increasingly IM systems will be integrated

    into other corporate back office systems such as ERP, CRM, SFA and SCM.
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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.

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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
  1. Cisco Unified CallManager 5.0: This call

    management suite of the UC system extends enterprise telephony features

    and capabilities to IP phones, media processing devices, voice-over-IP (VoIP)

    gateways, and multimedia applications.
  2. Microsoft OCS 2007: It consists of Office

    Communications Server (OCS) 2007 as the UC and VoIP server while Office

    Communicator (OC) 2007 as the desktop UC client. It helps integrate all

    the different collaborative tools such as Presence, Instant Messaging,

    Unified Messaging and IP telephony.
  3. Avaya's Distributed Office Solution: A SIP

    based IP telephony solution for large scale branch networks that provides

    centralized management for unified communication, collaboration and ensure

    mobility for employees across various branch offices.
  4. IBM Lotus Sametime Unyte: An enhanced

    version of Sametime, this is a Web conferencing services solution that

    lets you communicate beyond the corporate intranet.
  5. Cisco TelePresence: A high-definition

    video conferencing solution built to operate seamlessly with Cisco's VoIP

    architecture and products. It uses SIP for connection management and

    signaling, and RTP for media transmission.

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.

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