The Lure of Unified Communications
By N. Raghavan
Bangalore, Oct 15, 2007

Unified communications has caught the fancy of the corporate world - for a variety of reasons. Most important reason is the one, which many of us are familiar with in the office environment - inability to reach the person you want to when you really need to, despite having a variety of communication devices at your disposal. The same applies for people trying to get in touch with you.

While communication tools have proliferated, communication and collaboration with coworkers is becoming difficult. More so in a world where employees are becoming increasingly mobile and distributed. That's where unified communications comes in, helping break down communication barriers.

As voice, video, and data networks converge into a single user experience, more and more organizations are perceiving value in deploying IP-based unified communications solutions.

Unified messaging, one of the communication systems within the fold of unified communications, brings together fixed and mobile telephony, e-mail, faxes, instant messaging and conferencing (audio and/or video) into a single message delivery system. With voice, data and video traffic all on one network, users can send messages without bothering about what device the recipient will use to retrieve them. The recipient could be using a desk phone, a mobile phone, a PDA or some other device to retrieve the message.

Getting all your messages in one place is just a part of it, though. A message must be delivered to the right device at the right time to the right person and, more crucially, the recipient should be able to respond to it immediately. That's where 'presence' - a key feature of unified communications - comes in. Presence lets users know who's reachable where and when.

With unified communications, it's possible to put all your communications tools - voice, data, and video - on the same IP network. In fact, the various communication options can even be embedded into user applications, which imply that you can initiate a voice call, get into an instant messaging session, or simply send out an email, straight from the application.

The ease with which users can seamlessly switch between modes of communication is one of unified communications most attractive features. If you are, for instance, discussing a complicated business issue with a partner - via an instant messenger - and find you are not really being effective, you can quickly switch to voice communication, or try video conferencing, or call up a shared desktop or whiteboard, or any other mode of communication best suiting your purpose. With the flick of a button, as it were, a fax message can be converted into a voice mail. Similarly, an email message can be converted into a fax, or even 'read' aloud by a handheld device, and voicemails can be translated into text even before they are played. In other words, you have many choices to pick and choose from.

Unified communications applications are gaining increasing acceptance in the corporate environment. This is an indication that they enhance and improve business processes and services in a world where the number of mobile and distributed workforce is swelling by the day. By leveraging the multimodal and multimedia elements, a large number of vendors are starting to offer unified communications in a simple one click environment.

Widespread adoption of unified communications, particularly in the Indian context, is still some years away. Bandwidth, architecture, telecom infrastructure, security, reliability and regulatory framework figure high among the issues that are being debated.

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