Unified communications still confusing, but benefits better understood 14 December, 2008 By Chris Talbot

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According to Jayanth Angl, senior research analyst at Info-Tech, many people still relate unified communications to unified messaging and don't understand the difference. One of the many challenges facing unified communications in the SMB and enterprise markets is the confusion that surrounds its definition and the benefits it offers to businesses and end-users, he said.

Angl based his statements on an in-depth study conducted by Info-Tech on unified communications perceptions and roll-outs.

"What we found is we're still in the early stages of this market, but it's poised for significant growth," Angl said.

Some organizations have a good understanding of the benefits of unified communications technologies and how it can be applied to their businesses, and many such organizations have been successful in deploying the technologies. Businesses that are in the process of planning unified communications implementations or are currently deploying it are being driven by both business and technology factors, Angl said.

Businesses are looking to unified communications for improved collaboration, improved response times and the ability to better communicate with their mobile workforces, he said.

In fact, many organizations are already using some of the tools related to unified communications tools, and they see the benefit of brining all the technologies together under a single umbrella that streamlines IT and improves the end-user experience, Angl said.

"Consolidation and integrating many of these tools and bringing them under a single umbrella really streamlines the support aspect of communications," Angl said.

However, unified communications faces a lot of challenges.

"Integration challenges are really key here," Angl said. There are concerns about the integration of applications and existing infrastructure, he noted.

Additionally, IT has to be able to handle the additional complexity provided by unified communications while also dealing with ongoing IT support and helping end-users learn the technology, he said.

"With UC being a technology area that is really based on end-user collaboration productivity benefits, the acceptance of some of these new features and the integration of these new features into their daily work life is certainly critical," Angl said.

Unified communications is going to become a reality for businesses, though. It's less of if it will happen, but when it will happen.

"I think the benefits of IP communications are much better understood. Many organizations are viewing this as the logical progression of enterprise communications. So moving in this direction is a pretty clear opportunity," Angl said.

Microsoft, which really jumped into the market a year ago with the launch of Office Communications Server 2007, will be giving its OCS product an update. Announced on Oct. 15th, Office Communications Server 2007 Release 2 will be sent off to manufacturing on Dec. 19th and will have a worldwide virtual launch on Feb. 3rd, 2009., said Bryan Rusche, unified communications product manager at Microsoft Canada.

"The R2 product is somewhere between a new full version release and a service pack," Rusche explained during the roundtable.

While OCS 2007 R2 will contains fixes to the previous version, it will also add new features around voice, conferencing, collaboration and the development platform, Rusche said.

"This conferencing and collaboration area is one of the areas we've seen as a huge interest with consumers," Rusche said.