In these tough economic times, UC and the new wave of communications it represents, need to deliver sooner rather than later. So far, the UC vendors have yet to offer tightly integrated and interoperable products. The disjointed offerings make it tough to confidently predict ROI and so writing a UC business case remains more art than science.

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.

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. 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 Unified Communications (UC) is at the heart of the solutions

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.