Talk To Me, Now

Everyone wants to stay connected with the world, but managing this in real
time means handling various modes of communication like the cellphone, e-mail,
instant messenger, the landline, conferencing options, etc. Unified
communication promises to change this scenario by ensuring quicker response
time, irrespective of the mode of communication

Imagine any of these scenarios.

Scenario 1: You are driving to an urgent meeting, and suddenly you
remember you have to schedule some meetings and call up some people immediately,
but you are also in a rush to reach some place. You decide to attend to these
chores later and then probably forget them.

Scenario 2: You are with an important client, making a sales pitch and
he asks for some technical details, which only your CTO can give. You
immediately place a call to your CTO's mobile but are unable to reach him. You
call his office and are told he is on a flight to the US and therefore not
reachable for several hours. Your client is getting impatient and you risk
losing the order.

Scenario 3: You are working on a project report and need some details
from your colleague. He is somewhere in the office premises but you can't locate
him and can't reach him on his landline either. Your report will be stuck till
you are able to contact your colleague.

All of us have gone through one or all of these scenarios sometime in our
life. Now let's revisit these scenarios.

Scenario 1: You are driving and suddenly remember you have to schedule
some meetings and call up some people immediately, but are also in a rush to
reach some place. You simply speak into your mobile about the schedules and this
is transferred into your e-mail account. You then call the names of the people
you want to touch base with and establish contact.

Scenario 2: You are with an important client, making a sales pitch and
he asks for some technical details, which only your CTO can give. You
immediately place a call on your office's VPN, which sends your message on his
e-mail, voice mail, instant messenger (IM), mobile network, etc. He is bound to
access one of these communication mediums and revert with a quicker reply.

Scenario 3: You are working on a project report and need some details
from your subordinate. You drop him a mail and this again reaches him on his
e-mail, IM, landline, voice mail, SMS, etc. He calls you and your report work
progresses.

This is what unified communication (UC) is all about, the fancy jargon put
aside. Different vendors term UC differently and even CIOs have different
perceptions about it.

As definitions go, Cisco terms UC as the convergence of all business
communication and a set of services provided to enhance the flow of information
across all platforms and devices. According to Nortel, UC is basically the
convergence of the telephony domain to adopt business applications. “It is the
ability to communicate not just through IP but also TDM, all of this over a
single network,” said Sukhvinder Ahuja, Microsoft Business Leader, Nortel
Networks.

Vivek Porwal, Head-UC Business Unit, Avaya Global­Connect breaks the
definition of UC down to the different users of this technology. He said that
for users it is optimization of employee time. From the technology user's point
of view, it is nothing but bringing together of the real time (people, mobiles,
landline phones) and non-real time (e-mail, IM, voicemail) components of
communication.

Why go for UC?

As a solution provider, if you recommend a migration to unified
communication, your client will want to know why. It is therefore imperative
that you understand how UC impacts a business and how it will help a business
house in the short and long term.

“UC helps a company to integrate communications more closely with business
processes, ensuring that information reaches recipients every time and
everywhere, irrespective of their working environment, through the most
appropriate medium,” said Minhaj Zia, Business Development Manager-Unified
Communications, Cisco India and SAARC.

Here are some of the tasks UC makes possible. It brings mobility to the
workplace so that a user can get a unified view of calls, calendars, data, and
e-mail on any wired or wireless device. It also allows for sharing of all types
of media with voice, web, or videoconferencing participants.

Talk of sharing of data always throws up the issue of security. UC handles
that by extending comprehensive security throughout the network, from
infrastructure through call control devices and communications applications.
Most of this communication is on open standards, which permits integration of
applications from other industry leaders.

Take the example of a manufacturing facility. The personnel at this facility
use several modes of communi­cation-mobiles, e-mail, radio, IM, unified
messaging, video or audio conferencing, etc. Each of them prefers to use
different device depending on the application they are working on or the place
they are located within the premises.

UC can bring all these devices together on a single platform so that each of
the personnel is connected and part of the IP fabric that binds the
organization. This will eliminate complaints of inaccessibility to people and
information, thereby improving productivity.

It abolishes the existence of independent silos of information. It also keeps
the transaction costs under control, which can otherwise increase depending on
the increase in the information cycle.

	“UC helps a company to integrate communications more closely with business processes, ensuring that information reaches recipients every time and everywhere, irrespective of their working environment, through the most appropriate medium”
Minhaj Zia, Business Development Manager, Cisco

Gauging UC's impact

Most customers are likely to shrug UC off saying that it sounds utopian or
ideal for the top management, but is not critical in the contemporary
environment. A simple analogy to offer here is how a few years ago, cell phones
were also viewed this way and the top management was given cell phones. But
today, everyone has one hand phone and it has resulted in quick accessibility
and faster decision making. UC is just the next step in employee and customer
accessibility.

Most vendors have their own tools to track return on investment (RoI), which
will tell a customer how soon they can enjoy the benefits of UC deployment, and
its short and long-term benefits. “A good example of UC is video conferencing.
If a client can control his executive's traveling with video conferencing, it
entails huge savings,” pointed out Porwal.

Similarly, messages can be delivered, knowledge can be transferred and
decisions made without the need to travel. Besides money, there is huge time
saving as well, which in turn means that the man-hours can be devoted to other
assignments. This in short, will help buffer the company's turnover as it can
deflect these savings into other areas.

Benefits of UC

Currently, organizations are finding it difficult to establish real time
communication between their executives, suppliers and customers. This could be
due to physical presence, disparity in the time zones, geographical factors,
amid other reasons.

This is probably why more executives are on the move all the time trying to
establish contact, which often results in loss of productivity, delayed
decision-making process, increased costs and a higher manpower burnout rate.

“We will identify and recruit potential partners based on their existing customer relationships, their specialized skills in our focus solution areas, and their willingness to work with us in the sense of a true partnership”
Mohit Rampal, Country Manager, 3Com India

A Sage research report concludes that 27 percent of executives across
organizations around the world travel at least once a month. Technology
providers claim that UC, through its mechanism of converged media as well as
combination of hardware and software for connectivity between individuals, can
replace travel for these executives.

Mohit Rampal, the recently appointed Country Manager of 3Com India, felt that
UC is a powerful and effective way for organizations to improve their business
processes, increase their productivity, and enable higher customer satisfaction.
Effective UC implementation can help save on per mile travel by road/air. Also,
one road/air mile of travel saved is one road/air mile of pollution avoided.
However, these advantages may still not be enough for the technology to gain
mass adoption rapidly.

Players in this space

According to sources, the market for UC is expected to be $50 billion
worldwide by 2010, growing from the present $25 billion. According to a Frost
and Sullivan survey, in the global UC market for Q2, 2007 Cisco had a
marketshare of 26 percent, while Avaya had 13 percent. Nortel came up next with
12 percent, while Alcatel held 10 percent. NEC's marketshare for this period in
this market dropped to a little over six percent.

In India, Cisco has the lead in UC and is currently working with 16 partners
like Datacraft, Allied Digital Services and Nirmal Datacomm, for this
technology. 30 percent of its UC business is coming from SMB customers. This is
also why the vendor has introduced a business edition UC platform for SMB, which
scales from 50 to 500 users.

Nortel, which has its core competency in telephony, has set-up an innovative
communication alliance with Microsoft, which has its roots in software
applications. The duo work together on R&D, go-to-market and applications in the
UC space. “We have over 300 customers and over 90 alliances globally, and have
already got customers like the Mumbai International Airport for UC,” said Ahuja
of Nortel.

Right now, the company is working with tier-one partners like Wipro, which
has even set-up a UC lab to acquaint customers with the technology. It has now
created a roadmap to work with tier-2 partners where it is seeing huge traction.
“We have started training select partners as a lot of hand holding is needed for
this concept selling proposition. But they will not be ready to go to the market
till next year,” added Ahuja.

Microsoft incidentally is working with several other vendors for taking its
UC suite of products. Said Vibhu Ranjan, Director, Unified Communi­cations,
Microsoft India, “We see a lot of telephony vendors showing an interest in
working with Microsoft's solution providers to take the entire UC solution to
the market. Recently, at a roadshow, Avaya and one of our partners, Microland,
introduced a host of solutions unitedly.”

Incidentally, Avaya has its OneX family of UC solutions. Porwal felt that
verticals like IT, ITeS and manufacturing most dramatically can feel the impact
of UC. “Rather than focus on more verticals, we have defined accounts that we
focus on. We are working with solution providers for certain players in the
government, BFSI and manufacturing segment,” he added.

“UC is making inroads in the SMB market as well. The mid-market want to see how successful the deployment is with others, before they invest in the technology”
Vibhu Ranjan, Director-Unified Communications, Microsoft India

At the core of 3Com's UC strategy is its open services network solution,
which gives customers the flexibility to use technologies best suited to their
needs. It is also working with CRM and ERP software vendors to integrate its UC
solutions for a seamless experience.

“3Com was the first to introduce a pure IP-PBX and today we have UC products
and solutions in the market such as the NBX UC. This solution integrates voice
mail, e-mail, and fax functions into a single inbox for easy message retrieval
and management in real-time. It runs on the IP-PBX systems-3Com SuperStack 3 NBX
and NBX 100 networked telephony solutions; optional software connects
third-party PBXs and other voicemail systems,” said Rampal.

The company is currently strengthening its existing relations with partners
and acquiring new ones for UC. “We will identify and recruit potential partners
based on their existing customer relationships, their specialized skills in our
focus solution areas, and their willingness to work with us in the sense of a
true partnership. Specialization is something we are going to promote heavily to
both existing and new channel partners,” Rampal added.

Enterprises or SMB

The early adaptors of UC have been tier-1 enterprise, but the technology is
making inroads to the SMB market as well. “This is because the mid-market want
to see how successful the deployment is with others, before they invest in the
technology,” said Ranjan of Microsoft. But he added that his company is
encouraging tier-1 and 2 partners alike to start building their skillsets in the
UC market. So that when the widespread SMB companies start adopting this
concept, the partners will have the capabilities to support their needs.

The reason why SMB companies stand to benefit from UC is that they have
limitations in terms of manpower and have to deliver better services to retain
customers. “If they don't invest in the technology now, then their processes
becomes flawed and they can lose out to competition,” noted Zia.

Getting into UC will call for a total re-orientation on the partner's behalf
as well as intensive training into its various aspects. But at the same time,
getting into this technology space right now, will give them a first mover
advantage and an USP over their peers.

Also, the partner can talk to the CIO about improving the efficiency of the
client's employees and can show how the client can see RoI within a few months.
“It is not a me-too situation, but instead the partner can go to the client with
something better to offer than other solution providers,” said Ahuja of Nortel.

If this is not incentive enough, then partners can consider scaling their
skill sets to embed applications within the UC network.

Most customers think that adopting UC will mean totally revamping their
existing IT infrastructure. But this is not strictly needed. “You do not have to
rip and replace an existing system to be able to use UC from Microsoft-Nortel.
The solution from the alliance helps the customer take full advantage of the
existing investments by just adding components over it instead of replacing the
legacy systems,” said Ahuja. His peers from Cisco, 3Com and Avaya concur with
him about their respective offerings too.

	“You do not have to rip and replace an existing system to be able to use UC from Microsoft-Nortel. The solution from the alliance helps the customer take full advantage of the existing”
Sukhvinder Ahuja, Microsoft Business Leader, Nortel Networks

One more business stream related to UC that solution providers can consider
is opting for the application service provider model. This is ideal for a
solution partner who caters to SMB customers who do not want to block their
finances in deploying expensive IT inventory.

The partner can deploy an end-to-end UC network on his premises and simply
offer these services to his clients on a pay per use model. Some good examples
of this are providing web casts and secure webinars.

This will increase the client's stickiness to him as the chances of the
client moving to another solution provider is remote unless he is dissatisfied
with the services provider by the partner.

VINITA BHATIA

vinitavs@cybermedia.co.in