Unified Communications (UC) is more than just talk. It's an urgent business priority for the many thousands of businesses looking to establish a single, easy-to-use environment that encompasses a wide range of communications mediums, including phone, email, instant messaging, video and web conferencing and online collaboration tools.

But, in the race to implement their unified communications strategy, many are fast coming to the same realisation: The future will be a multi-vendor one.

That's because no one IT supplier can provide all the technologies needed. At the same time, in a true ‘best-of-breed' UC solution, all the disparate components involved must interoperate seamlessly.

It's a big challenge, agrees Mark Adams, collaboration and unified communications specialist at Logicalis. The good news, he says, is that many organisations have already made much of the upfront investment in new technologies that will be needed. "If you've already spent a great deal on installing a new network to support voice-over-IP, or have completed a full refresh of your desktops, then you're already well on your way," he says.

Now, the priority should be to work on the integration part, so that communications technologies that currently exist in silos can be accessed from a single point and used interoperably.

"It's a question of reconstruct, rather than deconstruct. If you use the technologies that you already have in place to build your UC strategy and the incremental investment required to achieve unified communications can be relatively small," says Adams.

In this respect, the advice and technical help of a trusted third-party advisor can be invaluable. "Very few companies can expect to have all the knowledge in-house to understand which technologies from different suppliers already interoperate and which don't - especially in an area where new technologies and new standards are constantly emerging."

For that reason, Logicalis will hold a series of briefings around the UK in June 2008, where representatives from Microsoft, IBM and Cisco - the world's most influential IT suppliers in the world of UC - will come together with Logicalis consultants to outline their vision of a true multivendor UC solution. These roadshow events, says Adams, will be "heavy on demonstrations and light on PowerPoint presentations", giving attendees the opportunity to see how UC can be put into action within their businesses.

The immediate advantages of new multi-vendor unified communications are compelling, he adds. Among them are presence and mobility. Presence collects information about a user's availability and communications capabilities, including whether a person is available on an office or mobile phone, or has access to Web or videoconferencing; mobility gives users the ability to redirect incoming Internet Protocol (IP) calls on the fly between office and mobile phones.

Unified communications will also enable companies to better reap the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies within UC, by tying them more closely to other corporate communications mediums, says Adams.

"Our approach is all about leveraging existing IT investments to enable flexible working, better work/life balance for employees, increased staff retention and better customer service and satisfaction. In a business environment characterised by constant change and the need to get more from technology with less budget to spend, companies need to start addressing their UC challenges immediately," he says.

Your Comments and Questions

Jeremy Taylor, about 1 month ago

I'm really excited about the opportunities UC presents. But it's not just the technical integration that I'm worried about; how would you suggest training employees so that a specialist in the company is willing to help a contact centre agent with a customer query, for example, or even that answering these questions is now a part of his/her job function? In short, it's the people element that I'm most concerned about, as without their input UC won't work no matter how smoothly the communications systems are integrated.

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