2010 Preview of the Hottest UC trends

With enterprises looking for ways to save money, demand for UC products is expected to grow rapidly. Gartner is predicting the unified communications and collaboration market will reach $7.4 billion by the end of the year, this is a 22 percent jump over 2008.

A host of companies, from Microsoft, IBM,Google and Cisco Systems to Siemens Enterprise Communications, Alcatel-Lucent and Avaya, are looking for ways to expand their reach in the field.

Key hot technologies will be:

1. Software as a service delivery, i.e use what you want when you want with on demand access to applications. this is truly unified communications as it delivers anywhere access from any device.

2. Mobile unified communications- integrating mobility into the enterprise, Smart phones become smart! integrating with existing enterprise communications for open access to applications with secure audits and controls

3. Video collaboration- from not just video phones but any any endpoint 9 have you seen webex on iphone- Awesome!) video collaboration from mobile, phone, desktop, unified access to collaboration

4.Web services either in SaaS delivery or local portal configuration. Delivering applications and data access via web services will enable lowest cost deliver with the greatest interoperability to not just any desktop but to any endpoint.

The emergence of SaaS and C loud Computing will come to life with major deployments and market acceptance in 2010!

UC, still a defining trend?

Interesting how Gartners new 2010 top trends is missing or has removed Unified communications and has moved to its top spot Cloud Computing. The questions raised is what does this mean for UC and is it still relevant to the enterprise. My thoughts are yes and that in fact UC is a no longer a trend but a main fabric within the business. It has become mainstream within IT, except it is not a technology but a collection of technologies and in fact some of the 2010 trends point to stage two of UC , i.e the architecture or deployment ( Cloud Computing) It is like saying Salesforce automation or Customer relationship management is not relevant as they are not top 10 trends, well that is because they are not trends but main pieces of how an organization operates. I think it is merely an indication that IT has to focus on specific communication applications/functionality, rather than on a label that covers all forms of real time communications.

The important elements of these new trends will be integration and interoperability with the enterprise communications, as opposed to legacy applications that are NOT integrated or interoperable. i.e the infrastructure deployed needs to integrate with core enterprise data and communication systems for maximum return.

So Dropping UC as product should not ring the alarm bells but raise cheer that it has made it mainstream and has moved from trend to reality.

True stats on enabling Mobility

Great study commissioned by Damovo in Europe where they look into the evolving issues around enabling mobility and it's effects on productivity and costs within the enterprise:

It talks about research illustrating that on average large enterprises were spending $400K plus each year on mobile calls, more interesting was the fact that 42% of their employees’ mobile calls were being made from within the office! ( supporting evidence that enabling mobility with controls and enterprise integration is a must to control escalating costs. see what we are doing through software-http://www.esnatech.com/products/options/uc_mobile.htm

 

Mobile devices are obviously becoming the device of choice and replacing the office desk phone as the primary business tool, unfortunately it drives up costs as it take no advantage of the enterprise infrastructure. for least cost routing  and low rates. with LD being at it's lowest in decades yet mobile costs continue to drive up the enterprise communication cost it is imperative that greater control over mobile costs whilst allowing end users the freedom to use their mobile phones where ever they chose yet leveraging the lowest cost of communications within the enterprise is imperative. This should form part of an overall mobility management strategy, including device, service and security management, which are ever important for today’s mobile deployments.

 

Companies are under-utilized fixed line and enterprise infrastructure with mobile devices. With the research revealing that nearly half (48%) of mobile calls are employees calling colleagues or the office, organizations should look to ensure that calls are being made using the most cost-effective method. Leveraging Mobility applications that link mobile devices to the PBX infrastructure are key tools that can be utilized and deployed with little or no change to the existing enterprise infrastructure. These software solutions register the mobile endpoints as trusted devices and bridge calls through FMC technology between the mobile and enterprise phone network.

 

The research also highlighted the lack control many organizations have when it comes to mobile usage. 31% of the IT directors surveyed believed that too much important customer data was kept on employees mobile phones, posing both potential CRM and security risks. “Ensuring that employees also store important customer data on a central directory or CRM system, is often an oversight when it comes to implementing mobile usage policies. While having this information on a mobile phone may be quick and convenient, it can mean that important customer data is more prone to theft or it simply leaves an organisation when employees changes jobs. UC technology allows mobile users to access contact and customer information off the enterprise business solutions and the UC infrastructure without any endpoint data being stored. This offers simply easy access to data with no importance to the endpoint. Users can change phones or even switch between devices without any worry of lost data or access data as all the content is stored in the enterprise but made readily available to access but trusted users regardless of what device they are on.

 

In essence investment in mobile applications delivers mobility with controls and security that imperative to reducing risk and controlling costs

	In order to start reducing their mobile costs, many organisations need to have better visibility over their mobile usage. This can be easier said than done, as many organisations often receive mobile services from a number of service providers meaning that carrying out a full monthly analysis of mobile expenditure can be a time-consuming task. Over a third (37%) of the IT directors surveyed said that didn’t even look at their organisation’s mobile bill each month. While just under three quarters (74%) admitted that they turned a blind eye towards employees making personal and international / premium rate calls on their work mobiles. The research also highlighted the lack control many organisations have when it comes to mobile usage. 31% of the IT directors surveyed believed that too much important customer data was kept on employees mobile phones, posing both potential CRM and security risks. “Ensuring that employees also store important customer data on a central directory or CRM system, is often an oversight when it comes to implementing mobile usage policies. While having this information on a mobile phone may be quick and convenient, it can mean that important customer data is more prone to theft or it simply leaves an organisation when employees changes jobs. Often employers only realise this when it is too late,” concluded Glyn Owen. The survey of 100 IT directors at UK organisations, with more than 1,000 employees, was commissioned by Damovo and conducted by independent research company Vanson Bourne. About Damovo UK From consultancy through to design, implementation, and lifecycle management, Damovo delivers the latest Information Communication Technology (ICT) solutions to meet the needs of today's enterprise. The company is at the forefront of delivering IP-based local and wide area networks, fixed and mobile unified communications and advanced multimedia applications, to improve the way organisations work by connecting them with their people, information and customers. Damovo (damovo.co.uk) has more than 30 years experience delivering ICT solutions and services to customers in both the public and private sector. It has long-standing relationships and the highest levels of accreditation with the leading vendors in the market, including Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Aastra and Mitel. Damovo also is an approved supplier under the Buying Solutions National Procurement framework and an accredited PASA supplier for NHS procurement. This heritage enables Damovo to provide its clients with the best communications consultancy and technology to meet their individual requirements. As part of the Damovo Group Limited, which has operations in ten countries, Damovo UK has more than 600 clients spanning 5,000 sites. Clients include Mersey Care NHS Trust, Bournemouth University, Manchester United, London Borough of Hackney, Transport for London, Nutricia, Bank of England and Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.

Power Of Presence to Unify the way we communicate

Presence technology is the critical component that enables unified communications, collaboration, and knowledge management technologies to work together to make organizations and their teams more productive. 

What is presence technology?

Presence is the ability to indicate to the internal and external resources useful information about a person, including:

• Who the person is.
• What the person is currently doing.
• Where is person ( location and online status)
  
• Whether the person can be reached. 
• The persons online and offline availability to communicate
  
• How best to reach the person (phone, instant messaging, email, video conference, etc.).

Internally this works very well but the outside world is far from complicated. It comprises perfect strangers, customers, family members and personal friends, team members, managers, and fellow employees, each of whom might merit a different response about an employee's status and reachability. Then there's the question of "who the person is" -- which, again, can vary by context. A customer seeking technical support, for example, might not care in the slightest about reaching an employee named Mary Smith -- he just wants to reach someone qualified to fix his particular problem. 

Presence is is really the way of providing the above information based on the priority and status of the individual or resource requesting it -- For example Friends and family during business hours may see, "Do not disturb -- having performance review with the Big Boss," but a selective internal resources- team members, high ups would see available for live conversation. Extending this process staff and support resources may see available for text but not live calls or collaboration.

Presence is not new technology in fact the earliest form of presence is the telephone busy  & No answer signal. Automatic call distributors (ACDs) are another approach to presence (routing callers to the "next available agent"). And a more recent mechanism is instant messaging, which includes basic indicators for availability, including the ability to set "away" messages.Presence is a tool that has been with business for many years but in the emergence of Unified communications Presence,and it's ability to manage and filter live status for rich collaboration, has emerged as critical technology to enable unified communications and change the way business communicates!