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The mobile phone was revolutionary for many reasons, most of all because it did away with the rule that a company's employees had to be at their desks to receive a phone call. Now, convergence and IP telephony are doing it again, but the change is even more profound: in the world of unified communications (UC) and communications enabled applications (CEA), employees no longer need a phone to make a phone call at all.

Using intelligent, IP-capable PBX systems and UC capabilities, employees can just as easily call colleagues, customers, friends and family as they can videoconference with them, work together on a PowerPoint presentation, have a text-based chat from their mobile phones, exchange large design or image files, or do anything else that a particular task might require.

The ground rules are changing and enterprise communication is undergoing a paradigm shift; the communication framework now works the way the user works – and not the other way around. By separating the function of reaching people from the devices that support that function and using a platform that links everybody to everybody – enterprises can contact users, when they need to and how they need to.

Enterprises are now aware of a better way to communicate - Unified communications. UC breaks down the barriers between voice, video, email, instant messaging, presence-based and other applications to improve communications and collaborations across the enterprise. State of the art IP PBX phones, soft-phones and other solutions easily enable UC while offering a smooth migration path from existing telephony environments.

UC is only the beginning, however. As users become used to the concept of UC, and enjoy the everyday improvements it enables, many enterprises are pushing communications deeper into their infrastructure by implementing systems built on CEA concepts.

In a CEA environment, the UC functions are separated from standalone telephones and servers; instead, they are built directly into business applications so that employees can use them without having to think about which device or application supports which functions. Nortel's Innovative Communications Alliance (ICA) with Microsoft has taken this idea further than any other vendor, building UC directly into the Microsoft productivity applications used by hundreds of millions of people around the world. If an employee is collaborating on a document with co-workers, for example, their status is continually updated within Microsoft Word, Excel, and other applications – and they can be reached via voice, video, or instant messaging with just a click.

Right now, CEA solutions are designed for specific applications. In the near future, however, CEA will be extended much further and application specificity will be a thing of the past. Any time, any where, it will take just a click to reach the people an employee needs to communicate with.