presence

Achieving UC Utopia

What is the ultimate goal of unified communications? For you, the user?

Organizations have all kinds of potential reasons for adopting unified communications. Cut costs. Improve efficiency. Communicate more effectively. Streamline business processes. Converge voice / network administration. The list goes o.

But what’s in it for you? Beyond from the hyperbole and and grandiose claims in marketing brochures, the ultimate promise of unified communications from a user perspective is the single number / single device access.

It’s nice to be able to use Presence to see if someone is available and choose the best method of communication based on that individual’s current status. What would be even better is if you only had one method of contact for the individual- his SIP URI for example- and the unified communications environment would intelligently route the communication based on Presence and preferences. Let the recipient choose the best method of communication instead of the sender.

We’re not there (obviously). Most people still have an email address, a desk phone number, and a mobile phone number at a minimum. Many people carry multiple mobile phones to stay in touch with different parties. Cutting Through the Clutter for Unified Communications takes a look at the current state of affairs and explores how we get from here to that UC Utopia of single number / single device communications.

Using Presence Effectively

Presence is arguably the glue that makes unified communications work. It is Presence, the ability to determine the current status and availability of contacts, that enables users to communicate more efficiently. Presence can let you see who is available, what they are currently engaged in, and allow you to choose the most effective method for communicating with that contact.

Maybe. I should say that Presence can do all of that…when used properly. However, users who simply set their status as Away when they are really sitting at their desk working because they don’t want to be bothered undermine the value of Presence. Similarly, users who have high idle times and show as Available when, in fact, they haven’t been sitting at their computer for the past hour also reduce the utility of the Presence information and in effect render it useless.

To be fair, as the concept of Presence and status have evolved from consumer instant messaging clients, the level of granularity for assigning status as well as the ability to control who sees what haven’t been there. In the early days of instant messaging services like ICQ status basically amounted to Available, Away, and Offline and pretty much anybody could see that.

Unified communications solutions like Office Communications Server 2007 R2 (OCS 2007 R2) have greatly expanded the concept of Presence though. Presence can tell if you are in a meeting or on a phone call. Presence can provide details about your status instead of just black and white information like online or offline. OCS 2007 R2 also allows users to determine how much information to share with contacts. One contact may only be able to see if you are available or not, while your manager or project team can also see details about what you are doing and when you’ll be available.

With access to the inner-workings of OCS, it is possible to determine whether a user is *really* Away, or if they are actively using their computer and just hiding behind the Away status. As this blog entry points out though, it is not an elegant solution. Uncovering the real Presence state is not something you want to provide every user, but for an Administrator this information may be valuable in determining how users are employing Presence and developing policies and user awareness programs to try and address any issues.  

Advances in Presence like the granular availability information found in OCS 2007 R2 make it much more useful…when used properly. It is important that users are educated about the proper use of Presence and that they are encourage not to abuse the Presence states. Without accurate Presence information many of the benefits and efficiencies of unified communications will not be realized.

Enabling Brings OCS to the College Classroom

Colleges and universities across the country use the Blackboard Academic Suite to allow students and faculty to engage and collaborate virtually. Enabling Technologies is helping to expand the functionality of Blackboard and provide more effective communications and collaboration with OCS for Blackboard.

OCS for Blackboard automatically populates the Office Communicator client with information such as the course, users, teachers, and information about the school. Users can view the Presence details of the professor or fellow students and determine the best way to communicate. 

“The Higher Education Universities that we have contacted are very excited to trial the OCS for Blackboard application,” says Bill Vollerthum, President of Enabling Technologies.

A 45-day trial evaluation version can be downloaded from the Enabling Technologies web site.

Windows Mobile 6.5 a Tad Underwhelming To Some

I have used some form of Windows Mobile phone for almost 4 years. During that time, I did flirt briefly with the iPhone- trading my AT&T Tilt with my wife for her iPhone for a few months. The iPhone had a coolness factor and some ‘gee-whiz’ bells and whistles, but I really missed having my mobile phone be an extension of my laptop environment.

I wanted Office Communicator Mobile and the ability to view Presence status of my contacts. I wanted native Office application compatibility (ability to view and work with Word and Excel files). I wanted my email to look and feel like the Outlook I am used to on my computer. So, I eventually reclaimed my AT&T Tilt and returned the iPhone to my wife.

That is not to say that there is not room for improvement. Significant improvement. So, it is with great anticipation that I have been looking forward to the next release- Windows Mobile 6.5. As you can imagine then, I was disappointed to read Joe Schurman’s thoughts on what he saw in Windows Mobile 6.5 while attending the 2009 Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans.

Oh well. It may fall short of what it could be, but it will still be better than what it is now. I guess baby steps are better than no steps at all.

BT Expands OneVoice VPN with Unified Communications

BT is expanding their OneVoice voice-oriented VPN service and incorporating unified communications capabilities. OneVoice already allows customers to realize cost savings and make calls around the world, but the new and improved service will include SIP connectivity and bring unified communications features such as presence to the OneVoice service.

Presence will allow users to see whether or not their intended recipient is available to receive a call or not. That insight can help them to communicate more efficiently and enable them to determine the best method of communicating given the urgency (or lack thereof) of the message being delivered.

Are You There?

Businesses have used multiple methods of communicating for some time. Phones have been around basically forever. Email has been part of the foundation of corporate communications for at least the last decade. More recently, instant messaging has been embraced by many businesses, and mobile phones have become relatively ubiquitous. So, there is nothing all that novel about a company combining multiple methods of communicating together. However, by itself that is just variable or multiple communications, NOT Unified Communications.

What makes Unified Communications then? Well, the core difference is in the unity. Part of what makes the communications unified is interoperability. Voicemails that are left for a voice call are sent to the users email. Users can initiate an instant messaging session or phone call by clicking on a user’s name in an email. Mobile devices are equipped with email and instant messaging functionality. The tie that binds though is Presence. Presence is the component of Unified Communications that elevates the solution from various separate communications methods, past a collection of multiple communications methods that can work together, to the point where the organization can really begin to realize the productivity and effeciency benefits of Unified Communications.

Presence is what notifies other users about the current state of a given user. Is the person in a meeting? Are they on a call? Are they available? Presence generally illustrates the user’s state with some sort of symbol or icon. Ideally, presence also gives the user some ability to control who can see what. For example, setting their presence so that they appear offline or busy to the general population, while remaining available for more important individuals like co-workers and customers. To understand more about the importance of Presence and its impact on Unified Communications, check out Presence: The Heart of Unified Communications on the SearchUnifiedCommunications site.

Aspect Unified IP 6.6 Introduces Microsoft UC Integration

Back in June I wrote a post about the newly formed partnership between Aspect Software and Microsoft. Aspect was already an established leader in providing IP-based solutions for call centers, and Microsoft is an established leader in providing unified communications solutions. The obvious goal of their union was to bring the features and benefits of unified communications into the IP-based call center, and provide a new market for Microsoft unified communications by expanding the capabilities of their UC offering to address the call center.

Aspect recently announced that this December they will roll out Unified IP v6.6. According to the article “Aspect Unified IP 6.6 is designed to offer an ask-an-expert capability using the instant messaging and presence technology available in Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. This newest feature enables Aspect Unified IP to seamlessly integrate to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 to specifically request real-time presence information.”

UC Provides New Attack Vectors

As companies made / make the move from traditional POTS or analog phone services to VoIP (voice over IP) communications, they introduce new risks that may lead to sensitive communications being compromised. There are plenty of books available detailing various VoIP threats and potential attacks. Unified communications introduces the concept of Presence and expands communications beyond the phone, but is primarily built on or around voice communications- generally VoIP.

Securing communications is critical for most companies and is mandated by various regulations and guidelines. UC complicates things further by blurring the line between voice, email, instant messaging, network data, voicemail, etc.. A recent article from Network World explores the cracks that UC introduces into corporate network security as well as examining some of the myths or hype around VoIP security issues.

Single Point of Contact

What does the future of Unified Communications hold? I am sure that Microsoft, Cisco, Nortel and other major UC players all have their own visions (weighed heavily with their own UC products and solutions), but Network World’s Michael Osterman describes his vision of the UC future in this article. I agree with the direction Osterman describes. I think part of the promise of UC is to have a single point of contact. I can have one handle- a phone number, or an IM handle, or an email address- and regardless of whether someone wants to reach me by phone, email, instant messaging, voicemail, fax, etc.- they will all use the single point of contact rather than having to know or remember an entire list of addresses and phone numbers.

Making Presence Interoperable

Presence is the keystone of unified communications. The ability to identify whether or not a given user is available, and what methods of communication might be most effective with that individual at that point in time is the foundation of what enables UC to make users and business processes more efficient and productive. Organizations that deploy Microsoft Unified Communications can federate with partners or customers that also use Microsoft Unified Communications, as well as with public instant messaging providers such as AIM and Yahoo. However, there remains a gap when one company is using Microsoft and a partner or vendor is using Cisco or IBM unified communications. In order to realize the benefits of presence across heterogonous unified communications systems, the UC vendors need to do more to make sure their toys play nicely together. Blair Pleasant talks more about this in this article from UCStrategies.com.