SearchUnifiedCommunications

Invest in UC Now: Top Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Wait Any Longer

In the midst of an economic downturn, right now probably doesn’t seem like a good time to be investing in a full-fledge UC implementation. But, what many people don’t know is that UC can immediately save your company money and give you the competitive edge you’ve been looking for - without breaking the bank.

Attend this Virtual Seminar, “Unified Communications: A Good Investment in a Down Economy” to find out what you can do to ensure that you’ve got the building blocks in place to reap the benefits of UC even if you’re not ready to be there now. The knowledge you will gain will be worth the time you invest and will not only allow you to weather the current economy, but help you come out on top when things turn around.

When:    LIVE! June 16, 2009. 9:30 AM - 2:30 PM EDT (1330 - 1830 GMT)

Pre-register today: http://go.techtarget.com/r/7534638/5421719

Reality Check: Can You Have UC Without VoIP?

Unified communications is a hot concept that seems to be growing despite the economic woes being experienced around the globe. Even with UC being everywhere you look though, there is still confusion by some organizations exploring the idea about what UC even is.

Voice is obviously a huge component of any business communications strategy, and it plays a significant role in unified communications as well. But, is voice a requirement? Or, more specifically is VoIP a requirement for implementing UC?

Each month TechTarget’s SearchUnifiedCommunications site does a podcast on a unified communications topic titled Reality Check. I appeared as a guest on last month’s podcast and was interviewed by SearchUnifiedCommunications Associate Editor Elaine Hom. We talked about the general concept of unified communications, and we dove deeper into whether or not VoIP is a requirement of unified communications, as well as the recently released Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and whether or not organizations really need to have an IP PBX any longer.

You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.

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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.

VoIP Security: The Great Afterthought

Why is security always an afterthought? It seems that time and again there are technological innovations that businesses embrace. They do their due diligence to compare their options. They invest heavily to purchase and implement the new technology. They spend money to educate users to take advantage of the new technology. Much later, usually after there is an actual incident, security finally comes into the picture.

Often, it is a matter of money. New technologies can help the business run more efficiently. New technologies can increase productivity. Security, on the other hand, is an investment of money to prevent a greater loss of money as a result of a security incident or data compromise. It works in reverse. Rather than increasing the bottom line, security prevents the bottom line from going down. But, security is only beneficial if and when there is an actual security incident to prevent. It is like an insurance policy. You pay for it and hope you never have to use it, and it is very easy to rationalize that it is reasonable to accept the risk and take the gamble that the event will never occur rather than investing money to safeguard against it.

TechTarget’s SearchUnifiedCommunications site takes a deeper look at the issue of VoIP and unified communications security in the article Unified Communications Security Ignored and Misunderstood.

Power Users Push UC Envelope

Companies are typically slow and cautious to adopt new technologies. That is partially a function of due diligence and testing to ensure that any new technology or application will function properly and provide value before committing to adopting it. The larger the enterprise, the slower the process of migrating to new technologies or updating applications. Almost every organization has their share of power users though who push the technology envelope and start using bleeding edge technologies as soon as they hit the streets. These users tend to be the “better to ask for forgiveness than permission” crowd and simply attach their rogue devices and install their rogue applications and figure out how to make them work from within the enterprise. In general, this behavior should be discouraged. It can cause problems with the user desktop and the network. It can introduce unknown risks and make the enterprise network open to threats that the network and security administrators are not even aware of. With some technologies though, they reach a sort of “Hundredth Monkey” critical mass and resistance becomes futile. In those cases, organizations are better off trying to figure out the business benefits of the technology and how to incorporate it in a logical and secure way, rather than wasting resources trying to fight it. This article on SearchUnifiedCommunications addresses three consumer unified communications products which have gained in popularity and could serve as a pseudo test environment for organizations looking to define the business value of unified communications.