presence

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.

Microsoft ‘Echoes’ Aims to Get Rid of Phone Numbers

In a recent post on the ‘All About Microsoft’ blog at ZDNet, Mary-Jo Foley describes an ambitious plan already in the works from Microsoft that seeks to eliminate the need for phone numbers. The project, codenamed ‘Echoes’, is being developed and incubated by Microsoft’s Israeli Strategic Development Center. The short-term plan apparently involves engaging telcom providers to partner up to provide a common network address book, to SMS in/out messaging, simultaneous ringing, click-to-call, single-sign on and more for their mobile phone users. In a nutshell, the goal seems to be a move toward greater convergence of the unified communications components (email, voicemail, instant messaging, presence, etc.) that will result in simplified communications that can be initiated by just knowing a user’s name rather than having to know, or look up their phone number.

Callwave’s Fuze Brings UC to SMB’s

TMCNet’s Rich Tehrani recently wrote about a UC offering from Callwave called Fuze. Unified communications can level the playing field for smaller companies that want to compete with the big boys. In this instance, Callwave is leveraging their approach to unified communications to produce a unified communications solutions aimed at small and medium businesses, and, in the process, squaring off with the big boys in their own arena like Microsoft, Cisco, and Avaya. Fuze appears to provide a fairly comprehensive approach to unified communications, including email integration, Skype-based audio and video conferencing, media sharing, follow-me functionality, and more. What is most unique about Fuze though is that it is a web-based solution, with no software to install and no special equipment to deploy. That could be a tremendous advantage, and it could be an achilles heel. The product is in Beta now, projected for a summer 2008 release. Fuze may be worth taking a look at if you are evaluating UC solutions for a small or medium business.