A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by IBM:
The Challenge of Unifying Communications and Collaboration
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I’ve been thinking a lot about social software lately. The UCStrategies.com team is in the process of adding a social software community to our website, and last month I joined the ranks of twitterers (or is it tweeters or twits?) using Twitter, the micro-blogging service. In addition, there’ve been some interesting discussions about unified communications on some of the Google Groups I’m in. This all leads me to wonder, how does social software relate to UC?
There are various types of social software or social networking services available–some, like Dodgeball and MySpace are purely social and aimed at consumers. Others, notably LinkedIn, are aimed at professionals, while some are business grade and aimed at enterprises–e.g., IBM’s Bluehouse and Lotus Connections.
Some began in consumer social networking but are now also being used for business or enterprise purposes. Twitter falls in this category; it began as a way for friends to keep up with the activities and interests of people in their social network, but now it’s used as a business tool as well, even though there are those who argue that enterprises should ban the use of Twitter by employees for fear that these tools are productivity drains, security risks, bandwidth hogs, and there may be inappropriate usage etc. Cisco is one example of a company that uses Twitter to provide updates to customers, and many companies follow Twitter to see what people have to say about them.
I first became aware of Twitter at the UCStrategies.com UC Summit in June when I discovered there was someone tweeting about the conference and what the speakers had to say. Since then I’ve been hooked, and discovered that Twitter is a great way to learn about what colleagues, vendors, and others have to say about unified communications. The downside is that along with hearing their views and activities related to UC, I also often hear about what they’re having for dinner, what movie they just watched, and that their kid just won their soccer match. Users can receive updates from the individuals or companies they follow via the Twitter website, IM, SMS, RSS, email, etc. I assume that it’s just a matter of time until users will be able to click-to-connect with someone who posted a twitter update, inviting other people to join in a live multi-party interaction via voice and/or SMS or IM. I would also expect Tweets to show up in users’ unified messaging inboxes, enabling them to send a reply via various communication modes.
Integration with business processes is already taking place in some cases. LenderFlex is using Twitter to deliver risk-based mortgage pricing to mortgage loan professionals and real estate agents, who can get information when and where they need it by twittering a few codes. Many communication enabled business process (CEBP) applications rely on immediate notification of events to the appropriate people, and Twitter could be a fast and easy way to do this. For example, the Los Angeles Fire Department used Twitter during the October 2007 California wildfires.
In addition to “public” social software services, several vendors have introduced or are developing enterprise-grade social software products and services, providing security and meeting enterprise-class requirements, with the potential of integrating with UC capabilities. For example, IBM is integrating Sametime with Connections and Quickr, so that a user’s profile card from Connections can be made available across the platform, letting users tap into someone’s shared files and be able to connect with them through Sametime.
While IBM/Lotus is perhaps the furthest along in this area, I’ve seen great demos from Alcatel-Lucent and others as well. I expect to see new and innovative social software offerings from several of the switch vendors in the next two years.
The connections between social software and unified communications are becoming progressively clear:
Tying in presence capabilities, click to call, click to conference, mobility, and other capabilities to make it easier to connect with people in your organization who have the expertise and knowledge you need to tap into at the time seems to be the basic and first step.
Notifications and Alerts on filtered or community topics is another way CEBP functions can be tied into simple applications such as Twitter, Facebook, etc.
We’re at the beginning stages of social networking in the enterprise–there will be many ways in which to UC-enable these applications and services, making them exponentially more useful for individuals and organizations. And hopefully without the details of your dinner or kid’s soccer game.
So, what do you think? What connections do you see between social software and UC? Drop me a line at bpleasant@commfusion.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications forum.
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by UC Strategies:
Unified Communication Strategies is an industry resource and web portal to help enterprises, vendors and system integrators develop their UC strategies. A source of objective information and thought leadership on Unified Communications, we provide analysis, executive interviews, podcasts, white papers and other information on the UC industry. Visit the UCStrategies.com website for more detail: www.ucstrategies.com
For the past month, I’ve listened to the political positioning about energy and oil, so I decided to do some homework. What I found is startling and compelling: According to data published by the U.S. Energy Information Agency and the CIA, the U.S. has only 1.6% of the world’s oil reserves and only 3.2% of natural gas reserves, but it accounts for 25.9% of global oil consumption and 20.1% of natural gas consumption.
If the U.S. were to become totally self-sufficient today–i.e., no further oil imports–the U.S. would exhaust its proven reserves in less than three years. Drilling in more places only gets the oil out of the ground faster, it doesn’t change the reserves and it doesn’t change the crisis status.
Worldwide, the situation is only marginally better. On the current trend line of 14% increase in consumption per year, the global oil reserves will be depleted in 2024. If conservation immediately flattened the global usage to no-growth, the oil would last to about 2060, allowing more time for transitions to alternate energy solutions. Coal and oil sands can extend this time horizon, but they are more costly to produce and more harmful to the environment.
The good news is that there is still time for the combination of conservation and alternate energy sources to make a difference, but we need to make changes in our consumption patterns–now. This brings me to the topic of Unified Communications.
It is possible to run a business with far less travel, far less commuting and far less occupancy cost than is practiced today. We could change business methods in three major categories, and UC is at the heart of the solutions:
Teleworking: Making effective telework possible is one of the major value propositions of Unified Communications. The combination of presence, IM, email and VoIP, allow a person to be as accessible from a home office as from a cubicle. Commercial businesses account for 17% of energy use in the U.S. and expend 67% of that energy on lighting and HVAC. Plus, the energy spent for commuting is estimated at 130% of the energy used in the buildings. Thus, shifting 50% of office work to teleworking could cut total U.S. energy usage by 11.5%. The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has adopted such a teleworking goal, targeting 50% by 2010, compared to the current Federal Government average of 4.2%.
Collaboration: New UC tools make it possible to work effectively with people anywhere, often even better and faster than in location-dependent office complexes. This begins with the basics of voice/web/video conferencing; extends to the information-enhanced collaborative workspaces such as Microsoft SharePoint or Office Live, IBM Lotus Quickr or Cisco WebEx WebOffice; and advances to powerful new levels with social networking options such as IBM Lotus Connections. Cases show collaborative tools enabling project accelerations and cost reductions of 100% and more, while less energy is consumed in the virtualized process.
Simplification: UC enables users to have a full business communication experience with a reduced set of tools. UC makes it possible to work in a virtual, teleworking, collaborative mode without a desk phone (or even PBX extension) and without a LAN termination/access level router. Possibly other economies can be found. Of course, there may be some offsets with more enterprise bandwidth for teleworkers and virtual connections, and the associated hardware–e.g., gateways, firewalls, VLANs–but the net effect should be lower cost and lower energy use. In addition, the trend to “hosting” and “cloud computing” would further reduce bandwidth equipment within the enterprise–once the teleworker reaches the cloud via their existing broadband connection and with proper encryption, there’s no need for more equipment in the buildings.
Some enterprises and some vendors are already actively pursuing this theme. Also, VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 will have two tutorial sessions on November 10 focusing on “How Communications Can Save Energy Costs.”
I urge you to act now to get UC tools deployed and to enable the energy conservation and cost reductions that are so clearly critical to the global economy and, for that matter, to the national security of almost every industrialized country. Let’s do our best to buy time while the alternative energy sources are advanced and deployed. We need to do this so that ROI can mean “Return of Independence” as well as “Return on Investment.” I’m proud to be associated with Unified Communications as such an important factor in this major issue.
What do you think? What do you think? Please write to me at mparker@unicommconsulting.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications forum.
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by NEC Unified Solutions:
NEC Unified Solutions helps companies unify their business communications through innovative software, applications, development tools, and services. NEC offers a complete portfolio for unified communications, wireless, voice, data and managed services, as well as systems integration and application development. For more information please visit: www.necunified.com
I’ve observed lots of discussions about Unified Communications on the web this summer, and am convinced that the reason this dialogue continues after several years comes down to one thing: Positioning. To be perceived as thought leaders in the UC space, some consultants and analysts are providing revised, updated or alternative definitions of UC in an effort to appear as leaders of the UC parade.
Meanwhile, the vendors do what they always do–modify definitions to fit their product offering. The IP-PBX vendors want enterprise customers to believe that the first thing to do when developing a UC strategy is buy a new IP-PBX.
I find it remarkable how senior executives from vendor organizations brag about their “poster child” UC success stories with one definition of UC, while their marketing teams use another definition. At the past three VoiceCons, keynote speakers from Avaya, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft have all used UC definitions very similar to the definition UCStrategies.com introduced over two years ago–”communications integrated to optimize business processes.” And, of course, these definitions are aligned with the views of Gartner, who published their first UC Magic Quadrant in February 2003 with this headline: “Unified Communications is emerging as an enabler for business process improvement.”
But while they understand what UC is all about, many vendors are not ready to change their business models to support what they know is looming on the horizon: Lower-priced PBXs that are an element of an enterprise communications model rather than PBXs as standalones existing unto themselves.
This puts most IP-PBX vendors in an awkward position: They need to continue selling expensive PBX solutions while they add products and services that will offset lower prices once PBXs become a call control feature server in a UC environment. Shareholders of public and private companies are not pleased when earnings drop as new business models evolve, which goes a long way toward explaining why Avaya went private, why Mitel did not go public on the back of the Inter-Tel acquisition and why Siemens Enterprise Networks sold for a low price.
My colleague, Blair Pleasant, develop the list below of UC Components, and it helps explain the challenges facing PBX/IP-PBX vendors:
Presence
Messaging–IM, email, voice, video
Communications–Voice, data, video, VoIP/SIP, CTI
Conferencing –Web, audio, video
Information sharing–web chat, file sharing, document sharing
Business processes, applications, directories
Common user experience–Portal, desktop, mobility, speech
Rules engine–Business rules, priorities, and permissions for routing, notification, and other tasks
Note that that list makes no specific mention of PBXs or IP-PBXs, a fact you’d never know if you visit the websites of most IP-PBX vendors. On those sites you’ll find case studies that show a new PBX as integral to a UC solution, and that claim cost savings (toll reductions or consolidation) or improvements in a business process to justify the UC investment. However, when you look closely at these case studies, they depend on the respective vendor’s configuration, rather than new functionality.
IBM and Microsoft take a different tack, but only slightly. For obvious reasons, they pay less homage to PBXs in their case studies, and focus instead on the specific advantages achieved by integrating communications into business processes. They also show how existing PBXs can be leveraged to justify the UC investment and in familiar ways–consolidation, toll-bypass, or conferencing in-sourcing.
But if you start down the road toward UC from a particular technology point of view–particularly, a PBX–you’re missing the mark. UC is not about IP-PBXs or even about VoIP on an application server. Instead, it is about reviewing business processes, looking for situations where human latency creates delay in response time, or where inefficiencies in the existing communications system create “hot spots.” Once you have that list you can analyze how integrated communications could improve the process–with or without a new IP-PBX.
Please, do yourself–and your company–a favor. Repeat after me: Unified Communications has nothing to do with buying a new IP-PBX.
What do you think? Do you believe UC and PBXs–IP or otherwise–are separate issues or are they joined at the hip. Drop me a note at jburton@ucstrategies.com or post your comments here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications forum.
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by Prognosis:
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For some of the most storied names in telecommunications, yesterday was both an end and a beginning. The spin-off of Siemens Enterprise Networks (SEN) and a leadership shake-up at Alcatel-Lucent, both a long-time coming, are finally under way, and the ripple effects will be felt by many within our industry, and for some period of time.
My colleague Eric Krapf has been doing a great job of reporting on these changes on NoJitter.com, so I’ll just recap the main events: First, Siemens Enterprise Networks (SEN), which has been seeking a buyer or partner for the better part of the past two years, has finally found one.
In a deal set to close by September 30, the controlling interest in Siemens Enterprise Networks has been sold to The Gores Group, a private equity firm. The portfolio of the Gores Group already includes Enterasys and SER Solutions, a firm specializing in contact centers, and Gores is now putting the three businesses–SEN, Enterasys and SER–into a single joint-venture organization.
SEN, while a major player globally, has had more than its share of troubles during much of the past decade. According to an article in Business Week, in the past two years alone, SEN lost more than $1.5 billion and cut more than 6,800 employees.
Siemens’s last major pop in North American market share came when it purchased the ROLM installed base from IBM about a decade ago. But the ROLM customers peeled off as their systems depreciated and Siemens’ share began to slip…and slip…and slip. Siemens was never able to replace those customers, despite widespread acknowledgment that its HiPath technology was great (once it finally arrived), and despite innovations like OpenScape and the more recently announced UC Server.
While the Siemens name will still be affixed to the new joint venture, its role will undoubtedly change. Siemens, perhaps earlier than any of the other traditional PBX vendors, acknowledged the ways in which its world–and its markets–were changing. It announced OpenScape before any of its competitors had comparable offerings, it moved aggressively to work with Microsoft’s Live Communications Server as a software platform and it was quicker than its peers to publicly embrace the shift in focus from hardware to software.
The new SEN is now teamed with Enterasys to offer an alternative to the Cisco monolith and, at least theoretically, it can focus on creating software-based products to fulfill the promise of Unified Communications.
I say “theoretically,” because integrating the companies that comprise this new joint venture is bound to be tricky, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that Gores won’t hang on to all of the SEN people. Hopefully, Gores won’t throw out the baby with the bathwater, and those that remain will have both the talent and experience to carry Siemens’ traditional strengths in real-time communications into the brave, new world of unified communications and applications.
And speaking of reductions-in-force, Alcatel-Lucent announced one of its own. It wasn’t big in numbers, but it is big news in terms of the future of this company. The architects of the Alcatel-Lucent merger–Pat Russo, Serge Tchuruk and Henry Schacht–are stepping down over the next several months. Like the Siemens’ news, this too has been a long-time coming.
It is never easy for giants to merge, and this particular merger has been as difficult as any in recent memory. Both companies are legendary (Lucent was the spinout of AT&T’s equipment business), with close ties not only to their major customers but also to their respective national governments. Prior to this merger, while touted for their respective intellectual property, neither company was noted for agility, nimbleness or flexibility; that remains the case today.
Siemens. Alcatel. Lucent. Three companies that belong in the pantheon of what telecom once was. These companies continue to play an important role in today’s market, but they can no longer rest on past glories. It’s a “whad’ya done for me lately” kind of world, and its time for these companies to offer a convincing reply.
What do you think? Will Siemens and Alca-Lu make the transition? Send your thoughts to me at fknight@techweb.com or post them on NoJitter.com or here in the VoiceCon Unified Communications forum.
Fred S. Knight
GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Publisher, NoJitter.com
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by Quintum:
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The UC blogosphere has been abuzz with discussion about UC adoption. This started with Fred Knight’s “Where’s the Beef?” and responses and reactions by Marty Parker and Irwin Lazar (see NoJitter.com for June 20, 23, 27, 30 and July 1, 14 and 18).
This debate was prompted by a study from Forrester Research about the perceived importance of various forms of communications functionality. But what’s missing from this debate is the distinction between today’s mostly narrow use of individual UC tools and the fundamental changes in communications coming in the rapidly-approaching future.
Over the past year, we’ve been talking about two fundamental types of use cases for UC: One focuses on helping individual users be more efficient in personal or business communications; the other type embeds communications into all kinds of business activities and applications, and usually achieves a much greater business impact.
It’s easy for buyers to understand how UC tools can enhance individual user productivity. And, since vendors focus on selling products, that’s what gets touted and adopted–the tools of easy conferencing, integrated mailbox, accessibility through presence, single ID, any device, and so on. Of course, “UC” is a hot term these days, so everything gets tagged (or rebranded) with that label; a lot of different product concepts are all called “UC.”
Moreover, each of us uses these communications tools differently, because we do different jobs or have different resources or access available to us. Like the old story about the blind men and the elephant, we all tend to talk and think about the elements of the UC tools spectrum in ways that reflect our perspective and particular interests. Hence, confusion about definitions, what UC is and what the adoption rate will be.
What’s missing from this adoption discussion is that a fundamental transformation is coming to the communications industry and UC. It’s easy to ask “Where’s the beef?” if the focus is on individual productivity tools. But, that focus underestimates the impact of the structural innovations that are coming.
The early target of Edison’s work with electricity and light bulbs was better street lighting. It would have been a huge error to have estimated future electricity demand by considering only how many street gas lamps and arc lights would be replaced. Creating an electricity infrastructure for street lighting enabled the electrified world.
The critical, long-term driver spurring UC adoption is the communications industry’s seismic shift from being vertically siloed to horizontally layered. Three decades ago the data processing industry went through a similar transformation. Layered architectures with standards and open interfaces between different components emerged. This spawned a new industry–thousands of developers and companies emerged to create innovative software applications. That led to the revolution that has seen computer processors become a critical component in virtually every aspect of modern life.
We are in the process of transforming the communications industry in a similar way, with layers, standards, and an ecosystem of business partners, applications developers and systems integrators. These will create a vast array of innovative communications applications, just as the computer revolution did decades ago.
This transformation will bring widespread changes in both business and personal communications. As with the data processing revolution, there will be emerging communications products and capabilities, but more important, new ways of thinking about how communications helps get things done.
Enterprises already are in the process of discovering how to take advantage of this transformation, and to identify and implement the second type of use cases–embedding communications functionality within business applications and business processes. Similarly, Zeus Kerravala’s recent article on NoJitter (”Mobile Unified Communications Provides More Bang For The Buck Than On The Desktop“) gives an example of how presence functionality is being used to trigger response to equipment outages that involves notifying people and also communicating status changes among equipment.
Enabling communications functionality at this level will require integration into existing systems, applications and processes. That is why the emerging ecosystem of developers is so critical to the way this market develops. But we are clearly on a path of transformation.
Electricity adoption and usage exploded far beyond street lighting once standards emerged (120 VAC, 60 cycles-per-second, standard plug configurations), an infrastructure was in place and inventors created new devices. Emerging standards and the developing ecosystem will enable a similar shift in how communications will enable new ways of working. In the future, today’s “adoption” debates will seem very naive.
What do you think? Please send your comments and experiences with UC to me at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com
Don Van Doren
Principal, UniComm Consulting
President, Vanguard Communications, and a co-founder of UCStrategies.com
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by Aastra:
Aastra is a global leader in IP communications products including IP-PBX systems, standards based telephones, unified communications and contact center applications. With 29 years experience delivering integrated voice and data communications services to some of the most demanding companies in the world, Aastra Intecom has developed deep industry expertise in solving the telecommunications challenges faced by large enterprises. Our unique perspective allows us to deliver highly reliable, scalable systems, deployed on time and professionally supported.
Those who have attended my “State of the UC Market” sessions at VoiceCon for the past several years know that I’ve deferred a market report and forecast until the shape of things became clearer. Well, that study, called “Unified Communications 2007-2012,” is now completed, and I wanted to share one of the many highlights.
Although the Unified Communications market is still relatively new, the future looks bright, as the market is expected to grow at an annual rate of 65% from 2007 to 2012. This growth rate is typical of a new, but broad-based market segment.
But while growth appears likely, the market is so new that it’s difficult to predict exactly when enterprises will move from a “wait-and-see” attitude to more aggressive deployment. That said, the research suggests that seeds have been planted and that UC will enjoy significant growth starting in 2010. We’ll see enterprises move from trials and pilots of capabilities such as presence, premises-based conferencing/collaboration and mobile UC, to integrating UC with business processes and applications.
One challenge in measuring this market is that UC solutions comprise various elements that can also be used in non-UC implementations. Elements including presence, IM, conferencing/collaboration, call control, mobility and unified messaging are not UC in and of themselves. If someone purchases an IP-PBX and a conferencing/collaboration product, even if from the same vendor, does this constitute a UC sale? Not necessarily.
The most common way of measuring is to look at the market size of the various components that make up a UC solution and add all of them up together. We have seen more than one such chart in VoiceCon keynotes from Avaya, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft, but that doesn’t really tell you the size of the UC market, mainly because most of the component elements are markets in and of themselves (PBXs and unified messaging, to name a few).
So, a different methodology is required to identify the “True” UC market, rather than the much larger “UC-capable” market. The study presents several methodologies–one way is to use a formula to identify the percentage of the total gross UC sales and seat shipments that will be implemented for UC solutions. Based on this, the Net True UC market is forecast to grow from $200.8 million in 2007 to $2.433 billion by 2012 (this is the High-Growth Scenario, a Mid-Growth Scenario is also presented).
Other issues of interest in the report include analysis of the challenges facing both users and vendors, examination of how UC is being rolled out and implemented in enterprises, and assessments of what is needed to help the UC market succeed. You can check out the Executive Summary here. If you have any questions about this new market study, contact me at bpleasant@commfusion.com.
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
This issue of Unified Communications eWeekly is sponsored by VoiceCon Amsterdam:
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The evolving Unified Communications industry is reshaping the communications marketplace. The changes create challenges for some vendors and opportunities for others. The legacy vendors are scrambling to revise their business models, and all of the major vendors, both legacy and emerging, are looking at how to flesh out their UC product portfolios.
One thing is clear: We’re going to see more acquisitions. None of the vendors can offer all of the piece-parts that are required in a UC future, and there’s neither the time nor the human resources for each of the vendors to “roll their own.”
At one level, there’s nothing new about this. If you think about Cisco or IBM, for example, their respective UC offerings run off platforms that came through acquisition: Cisco purchased Selsius Systems and IBM bought Lotus. When you add Microsoft into the mix, you see the critical role that M&A activity has played in getting them positioned for UC. Here’s a recap of some of their acquisitions:
Microsoft: PlaceWare, Groove Networks, media-streams.com, Tellme Networks and Parlano.
Cisco: Selsius Systems, GeoTel Communications, Vovida Networks, Active Voice’s UM product, Latitude Communications, dynamicsoft, Orative and WebEx.
IBM: Lotus Development Corporation, Databeam, Ubique and WebDialogs.
From my conversations with CEOs of the UC vendors, it’s clear that they recognize the importance of M&A and strategic partnering. At VoiceCon Orlando 08, the UCStrategies.com team held an evening social function that included the top leadership of major UC vendors and start-ups. Both groups found that mix to be very useful and, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of the companies that began their conversations that evening wind up formalizing close working relationships in the near future.
With two decades of experience with communications M&A, I can tell you that there’s been an incredibly high level of activity during the past two years. Traditionally, the biggest challenge involves potential partners finding each other-small companies and startups either can’t find the right people in the big companies to talk to or can’t get their attention; big companies have so many irons in the fire, they can’t work with as many companies as they would like.
I think this is about to change; we are entering a Unified Communications “land grab.” Now that vendors have validated the UC market, it is time to compete. Enterprise customers want to keep the number of vendors they work with down to a reasonable number, which requires a balance between engaging with more vendors and implementing some UC components that are not best of breed. The major vendors understand this, and some are building up their capability to go out into the market and grab the best available UC “land” to complement their UC strategy. This creates a challenge to enterprise customers-they need to be alert to how their vendors are proceeding with their partnering and acquisitions.
But it’s certainly a good time to be a small company/start up in UC, provided that they begin to take the necessary steps that will make them an attractive partner and/or acquisition target. The UC land grab will determine the ultimate success and failure of vendors-both the acquirers and acquirees.
What do you think? Are you seeing or hearing more about UC-related M&A? Drop me a note at jburton@ucstrategies.com
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
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In the early 1980’s the fast-food chain Wendy’s created a classic ad that took on its nemesis, McDonald’s. Three elderly ladies waddle up to a food counter and, after admiring the size and fluffiness of the bun, are dismayed to find that there is precious little too be found-or eaten-within the bun. The “Where’s the Beef?” line was born and it has been part of pop culture ever since (see the original ad).
A recent study by Forrester Research suggests that many potential buyers are asking the “Where’s the beef?” question when it comes to Unified Communications. As reported in Network World, Forrester found that “Fifty-five percent of the 2,187 North American and European companies queried said there is ‘confusion about the value’ of unified communications for their company.”
Forrester analyst Ellen Daley, author of the survey’s report, told Network World, “There’s been a 21% increase in UC pilots since 2007 but no increase in firms buying UC. A lot of people are talking about UC, a lot more are tipping their toe in; but at the same time they’re all saying they’re not sure about the value.” (The article can be found at Network World: “Enterprises baffled by unified communications, survey finds“)
If Forrester’s findings are even remotely correct, it’s a serious indictment. To be sure, there have been studies that identify how UC is being used to improve end-user productivity as well as significant business processes. Just a couple of weeks ago, Blair Pleasant reported on the “hidden benefits” of UC, based on research she and Nancy Jamison conducted (see “The Hidden Benefits of UC“).
Still, vendors have been talking up UC for the better part of two years and Ms. Daley reports that “Forrester receives inquiries from clients regularly asking simply: What is UC?”
If, after all this time, two of the most common UC-related questions are: What is it and why does it matter, either UC is a hoax, or the folks who believe they’ve got answers to those questions need to rethink how they’re communicating.
I reject the UC-is-a-hoax argument, but I believe the industry needs to find better ways to discuss what UC’s really all about-and soon.
Each of UC’s primary elements-telephony, messaging, IM, video, etc.-aims to solve specific, clearly definable problems. By contrast, UC has those elements continuing with their solo missions, while, at the same time, becoming integrated into larger communications software and applications infrastructures that yield greater benefits than any of the components could on their own.
The dilemma is that UC isn’t a “thing” that I can just go out and buy. Wait, let me amend that: I can go out and buy it, but if that’s all I do, I’m going to almost immediately run smack into the “where’s the value” question.
My friends at UCStrategies.com and other UC advocates have spent a lot of time and effort pointing out that the value of UC-whether measured in hard dollars or in user perceptions-requires considerable upfront investment in planning and targeting, because the biggest bang for the buck comes when UC deployment brings about changes in how a particular business process or chain of processes is carried out or how an organization carries out its mission. In short, UC goes way beyond traditional “reach-out-and-touch-someone” communications and into the realm of how business or work actually gets done.
And therein lies the rub. When networked computing came into vogue in the 1990s, it was easy to justify the costs-shared resources, shared access, better document/data access and storage, etc. Then, after LANs and WANs were in place, business processes changed-indeed were revolutionized-because people figured out the various ways they could take advantage of the new infrastructure.
With UC, however, the situation is reversed. We’ve already got more tools for mobility than we know how to handle, we can message to one another via text, voice and even video, we IM like it’s going out of style and the use of presence is growing fast. To be sure, UC faces interoperability challenges-big ones-but if all those interoperability problems were to magically disappear tomorrow, would the two key questions-What Is UC and What’s Its Value?-also disappear? I don’t think so.
But what do you think? How would you answer the “Where’s the Beef?” question? Send your replies to fknight@techweb.com.
Fred Knight
GM/Co-Chair, VoiceCon
Publisher, NoJitter.com
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The UC market continues to grow rapidly. Microsoft and IBM are reporting tens of millions of licenses shipped for Microsoft’s OCS and IBM’s Sametime, while Avaya, Cisco, Mitel, NEC, Nortel, Shoretel and Siemens are all shipping impressive UC solutions.
That growth, however, doesn’t mean that everything’s rosy. Customers face considerable challenges as they move to deploy this new technology in way that is practical and affordable, and which produces beneficial results.
To help them through those challenges, enterprises are increasingly turning to Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and Systems Integrators (SIs). While the product vendors are obviously important, when an enterprise seeks to achieve the applications and results that UC promises, their progress often is largely dependent on the level of UC awareness and skill levels of the VAR or SI that is involved.
The best UC VARs/SIs have invested in the future on behalf of their enterprise customers and prospects and, of course, themselves. They’ve expanded their skills base and product lines; traditional telecom VARs/SIs are becoming partners of Microsoft or IBM, while IT-focused VARs/Sis are signing up to carry IP Telephony product lines. There is a growing cadre of experts who know how to deliver an effective communications assessment-what are the communications issues and opportunities-before they even begin to work on a network assessment or a bill of materials.
We saw about a dozen of these leading VARs/SIs at VoiceCon Orlando this past March, and I expect to see even more at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 this November. Dimension Data announced its Unified Communications Development Model, which “helps organizations assess their competence and capabilities in the area of unified communications and develop a roadmap for UC implementation.” INX, Spanlink, Accenture, Touchbase, CRI, SPS, Enabling Technologies, CommuniTech, and others have also been developing their UC practices to focus on the applications and business improvement opportunities, far beyond the basics of VOIP.
The bottom line is that your choice of VARs and SIs will be among the most important decisions you make as you proceed with UC. My advice is to get them involved as early as possible so you can tap their expertise as you develop your requirements, plans or RFPs. Some of attributes to consider as you make your selection are:
Track Record: Does the firm have an organized UC Practice, as evidenced by expertise and experience?
UC Certification: From both telecom and desktop (e-mail/IM) vendors.
In-House Talent: Be wary of an outfit that functions like a “talent broker.”
References: Can you contact customers who have achieved tangible UC benefits?
Skill Sets: System integration expertise in both interoperability and in use of APIs and toolkits to customize new UC solutions for your environment, perhaps from call center experiences.
Fiscal Stability: Will they be around when you need them-now and in the future?
VARs and SIs usually sell specific brands of software and/or hardware, so there are still plenty of reasons to hire independent consultants to provide expertise, perspective, checks and balances, and negotiating leverage. Yet, I expect that my independent consulting peers will give you similar advice-the value you get from your UC investment will depend as much, if not more, on the quality of the VAR or SI that you hire as on the product brand being implemented.
What do you think? If you’ve had experiences-positive or not so much-with UC VARs and SIs, please drop me a note at MParker@UniCommConsulting.com.
A Cooperative Project of VoiceCon and UC Strategies
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A decade or so from now, we’ll look back at these early days of Unified Communications and smile at the “quaint” ways businesses used these emerging capabilities. Today, most of the buzz and most of the usage of UC is around “user productivity” applications.
In the future, an even richer array of communications functionality will be embedded in business processes and applications. Increasingly, communications will be initiated by software in a workflow application rather than by a person picking up a handset to make a phone call. Some of this will be fueled by system integrators and applications developers building on the APIs and standards in this emerging, horizontally layered communications environment. But it also will be the result of a shift in how people work-communications bottlenecks will no longer impede information flow.
A hot topic of discussion, of course, is finding the ROI in UC. In the future, I believe that this will be much less of an issue as UC functionality becomes woven into the infrastructure and becomes integrated into how we do our jobs. But for now, it’s an important consideration, both for those seeking to implement UC and those seeking to sell it.
Last week’s issue of this newsletter was written by my colleague Blair Pleasant, who, along with Nancy Jamison, recently completed a study of how end users are using UC and the types of benefits it’s producing (the article can be found at nojitter.com). Blair and Nancy interviewed enterprise end users to document the extent to which UC is helping them be more productive and effective at their jobs.
Blair and Nancy found that user productivity dominates much of the discussion and the examples of UC’s benefits. They heard the “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have it!” kinds of responses from the people they interviewed.
But that enthusiasm shouldn’t be confused with ROI benefits. The typical way that user productivity gets translated into ROI is by estimating the time saved through the use of the tool, multiplying that by a salary cost, and then extrapolating that to the entire population. This approach is usually skewered by the bean-counters.
Blair and Nancy also found evidence that UC already is being used to change the way people work. There are examples in technical support, marketing, HR and many others. Blair refers to some of these outcomes as “hidden benefits”-crisis management/avoidance, improved rapport and camaraderie among geographically dispersed workgroups, and an increased talent pool of potential workers. My view is that these “work-changing” and “hidden” areas are where the most meaningful ROI opportunities are to be found.
The trick is figuring out how to quantify the ROI lurking there. One approach is to identify “what changes” and then to measure that. My experience is that a requirement for an ROI calculation is often not so much trying to estimate dollars, but rather understanding that the change really results in something positive happening. I find that senior management is really good at understanding the business impact of a change-for example, improving the close rate by 10%, responding to customer requests a day faster or accelerating time-to-market by two months.
In our work with enterprises, we therefore look at how UC functionality can eliminate communications bottlenecks and what changes as a result. If ROI estimates are needed, we build a case study that shows (a.) how things work today, (b.) how will things work with UC, and (c.) what changes. Documenting the changes and showing the logical way that these will occur usually helps line-of-business managers understand the magnitude of the impact on the business.
Of course it’s important to both measure and document the results, so you need to begin with a baseline-measuring the key variables that will be affected by the UC implementation. Tracking changes in these variables builds a powerful case study, and helps prove the value of the UC application.
Rich UC applications will become much more common in the future. The industry’s challenge today is to get through these early, awkward, growing years until the benefits become obvious.
What do you think? Please send your comments and experiences with UC ROI to me at dvandoren@unicommconsulting.com
Don Van Doren
Principal, UniComm Consulting
President, Vanguard Communications
Co-founder, UCStrategies.co
