One system to rule them all

A strategic IT initiative with many benefits, Phil Van Etten, chief executive of Azaleos outlines why many organisations are waking up to the potential of unified communications.

A couple of years ago the concept of unified communications (UC) was more a vision and hype of the vendor community than reality. Today this vision is slowly maturing into reality as one of the strategic IT initiatives for many organisations. Technology developments and standards have driven the interest in unified communications. Public sector and commercial organisations are starting to deploy UC across their enterprises as they seek to benefit from integrating and automating a variety of communication services into a single, coherent architecture. In doing so, they are realising the benefits of improved efficiencies and productivity, cost reductions and better, faster communications inside and outside the enterprise.

And yet, in spite of this new momentum for UC, is corporate IT really ready for this new medium? The ability for UC to extend beyond the corporate network or mobile network is the end goal but how big and cumbersome are the hurdles? It must deliver communications and web capabilities in real-time wherever the user is, whatever they are doing and wherever needed, whether that is in the office, at home, on a train or in another country. And most importantly it must work across whatever device or application that is best for the end-user.

While the benefits of UC are extremely compelling, there is still resistance and uncertainty inside the corporation. The resistance comes primarily from two fronts. The first is IT professionals that are already overworked and overwhelmed keeping other mission-critical systems up and running, and also potentially under-trained and insecure with being tasked with keeping the phone systems running now. The second comes from internal corporate telecoms personnel used to managing their own PBX hardware and also fearing UC as an unknown and insecure world where everybody’s data is intertwined with no boundaries or uptime safeguards.

As the tight economy continues (and UC becomes more mainstream) tighter budgets and fewer resources will lead many IT and business professionals to a more aggressive UC strategy and deployment.

The rise in mobility as well as the proliferation of new services is driving major change within the enterprise today. IT professionals have traditionally had a piecemeal approach to communications through deploying one technology after another without a coherent and integrated strategy. The shift taking place through UC is the move to join all these disparate pieces together through a single framework.

The desire for UC is significant. According to research by IDC, the unified communications market in Europe was worth $2.6 billion in 2008, and will grow at a CAGR of 39 percent to a value of $13.5 billion by 2013. This makes it one of the brightest spots in a very tough technology market. The reason is that it delivers communications services in an easy to use environment for the end-user. For example, UC allows users to search for contacts on the corporate directory, instantly start an IM or video session, initiate a web conference with colleagues, check last call and listen to voicemail all from one interface.

Moreover, the benefit of UC is its ability to embed itself within traditional applications so that a user can simply click on a name or number in a document and start a call, instant message or email. By creating a ‘one system to rule them all’ for communications the opportunities to streamline and optimise the way users work is significant. However, UC comes with its challenges.

The first challenge for many is not knowing where to start. Often companies start down the road to UC without the necessary planning or understanding of their assets and value. For IT professionals this is a key stage in conducting a review of their communication equipment and systems. As a result of the complexity of UC, this review – and additionally the initial implementation and ongoing servicing of a UC implementation – quite often benefits from the assistance of IT consultants and/or outsourcers experienced in UC systems. From this audit, IT can then create a vision for its UC with clear goals and objectives.

Many organisations make the common mistake of trying to equate UC with IP Telephony and by starting off their UC experience trying to roll out VOIP and/or a PBX replacement. One important thing to remember about UC is that it doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing, telephony-led proposition. In fact, some of the simplest and earliest IT wins around UC focus in on only an initial install of an enterprise IM + presence system and/or a corporate web conferencing system. PBX replacements and voice-mail integrated with email can be a distant phase two or three of the overall UC rollout strategy.

The next big mistake is that quite often IT tries to roll out UC to everyone. The problem with this approach is that not every user wants everything. Organisations need to make sure the technology is deployed to the right people and teams that are going to use it. As Steve Blood, senior VP at Gartner, said recently, “one of the pitfalls is you shouldn’t be giving it to everyone because not everyone is going to use it. Companies should be identifying the user groups that are going to be using this technology.” For example, a complex and distributed workforce would more likely benefit from unified communications than a company where all staff resides in one office.

A final misstep often seen with new UC systems is that IT attempts to own the ongoing monitoring and maintenance of the UC system post deployment. UC involves many new concepts and IT skill sets, and because it is a core mission-critical system (especially when you include the IM, email and telephony components), it can often be most efficient to look at turning over the management of this system to an outsourced managed service provider. The outsourcer brings skill sets and training to the job which doesn’t have to be hired and maintained within IT.

One of the principle drivers for UC is the ability to reduce costs. Unfortunately many companies make the mistake of first trying to zero in on ‘soft’ productivity cost benefits which are notoriously hard to measure and quantify. Such an ROI approach can sometimes leave new UC projects dead-on-arrival and scrapped after the pilot phase is completed. A more successful approach is to focus on cost reductions via integrated systems and the elimination of system (hardware and software) redundancies. Many may argue that if systems such as email, web conferencing, instant messaging, mobile and fixed telephony are in place already, how much more can be achieved in terms of costs? However, by simplifying and integrating all forms of communications major costs can be saved. According to research by Orange Business Services, UC can have a significant impact on the bottom line.

By unifying all communications into a single strategy, managed and delivered by the internal IT team or through a managed service provider agreement, organisations have the opportunity to make significant cost reductions in the way the services are supported. By creating a single framework, IT can to consolidate the number of communications suppliers they are paying for their various communications services. Furthermore, by considering a managed services approach to unified communications, further benefits exist for those firms willing to relinquish the management of their communications.

No vendor has a product that completely supports all of an organisation’s UC needs. As a result, interoperability of systems can be important to the success of the UC initiative. While many solutions do support industry standards, some will be best if they function in their own environment. On the other hand, some products are geared to interoperate with many different systems and so provide much more agility for the enterprise.

An important part of the interoperability challenge is the ability to understand how the services are used in the first instance and what the UC vision is for the enterprise. For example, knowing that users would benefit from click to call on a name in a spreadsheet will influence the interoperability of the products needed to achieve this goal. Mapping out the systems and overlaying what is required will provide the gap analysis that will shape the investment and solutions required to deliver the correct UC environment.

Having a UC environment mapped to the needs of the business can improve productivity. Multiple studies have shown this to be case. However, studies have also found that while more communication has improved productivity, the increase in communication channels and the change in ‘traditional’ work processes brought about by UC, can also quickly wipe away any productivity gains. It appears that users are being overwhelmed by the different forms of communication and struggle to keep up.

According to the Orange Business Services research, the majority (95 percent) of the respondents said they have improved the business productivity but are not satisfied by the resulting slow speed of communication. In fact, around 45 percent of CIOs agreed that colleague response time decreases significantly due to multiple communication channels.

Understanding how individuals, teams or groups communicate will help IT build a UC environment that delivers the appropriate communication services to every user. In having this flexibility, productivity and response times are improved.

Recent research by Aberdeen Group found that best-in-class respondents improved their responsiveness to others by 31 percent, more than two times the industry average and five times faster than laggards.

The ever increasing number of enterprises (over 66 percent of European enterprises in 2009) conducting UC trials and pilots leaves no doubt that enterprise adoption of UC will increase, despite current deployment rates remaining below 20 percent according to Gartner. The state of the global economy, a reluctance to engage in a telephony rip and replace strategy, and a faulty ‘all or nothing’ approach to UC deployments have all combined to contribute to a dampened adoption of unified communications.

Nevertheless, the barriers are quickly being overcome and the path towards UC is becoming a permanent part of the IT strategy. As products become deployed, the challenges will shift from technology to organisational and change management.

Unified communications has tangible benefits to a business whether it is reducing costs through consolidating products and services or improving productivity through better communication and enhanced customer service. Now is the time for IT professionals to start the journey towards creating one system to rule them all.

www.azaleos.com