definition

Defining Unified Communications

What is UC? A recent exchange between Information Week’s Eric Krapf and one of his readers illustrates some of the confusion that exists in the general population. In a nutshell, Eric had stated in a prior article that adoption of unified communications is progressing slowly. A reader responded to say that everything is “unified communications”- YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. and that all of these services and technologies represent the convergence of communications concepts to provide unified communications. I agree with Eric’s reply though. Those things are an example of technology convergence on another level and they are integral to Web 2.0, but they are not ‘unified communications’ in the sense we generally refer to. As Krapf points out, when the press refers to ‘unified communications’ what they really mean is enterprise unified communications- or bringing communications technologies together in a way that makes users more productive and business more efficient.