Today's globalized world has created a communications environment that is chaotic, cost-conscious, and demanding. This poses several business challenges including the need to increase employee productivity and efficiency, reduce costs and ensure return on investments made in the communications infrastructure. It is ironic that the multiple modes of communication-e-mail, voice mail, cell phone, instant messaging, conferencing-that are supposed to make people easier to reach are instead causing information overload. Already information workers are becoming overwhelmed by the complexities of dealing with multiple phone numbers, voice mail boxes, user identities, passwords, and device requirements.

The challenges are also for IT infrastructure managers, who are forced to manage multiple communications systems for telephony and software-based communications. But, is this improving user productivity? The answer is a big 'No'. A Harris Interactive Service survey has found that two-thirds of business phone calls end in voice-mail messages. As a result, 25% of information workers spend the equivalent of three full workdays each year playing phone tag and leaving voice-mail messages. This underscores the inefficiencies of the standard telephone communication.

IT decision makers have so far been investing in two parallel communications infrastructures: voice communications through PBXs and email communications through PCs. Both investments have delivered significant business value to their organizations. This is often fragmented, comprising multiple applications and hardware from different vendors. Therefore it's time consuming, inefficient for employees to use, and also expensive for IT departments.

So, here is a situation where infrastructure is working at cross-purposes toward organizational goals and bottom lines. So, in today's always-on, always connected global workplace environment, how to get a global organization to act in concert across boundaries? How to prioritize and react to the sheer volume of communications and be more productive? How to leverage existing enterprise infrastructure and the Internet to lower communications costs?

Future Trends
Before answering these questions, it is important to highlight some interesting trends that will define the communication landscape of the future. First, the PC has displaced the phone as the primary communications mode in the workplace. It is the first place employees look for messages each morning and the desk phone is beginning to lose its functionality-at least in its current avatar. A Harris Interactive Service survey has found that 61% of workers cite emails as their primary mode of communications at work as against 31% who use phones. Furthermore, 40% prefer using instant messaging instead of a phone for business communications. Second, business communication is rapidly moving to software. It is important to note that the PC infrastructure has seen more innovation than the desktop phone, despite a evolving PBX systems and standardization of IP networks. In fact, a May '06 Gartner report predicts that by 2010, 80% companies will integrate communications (voice/messaging) into business applications or processes.

The arrival of software–based unified communications will change the way enterprises use the convergence of VoIP telephony, email, instant messaging, mobile communications, and audio/video Web conferencing to deliver a superior communications platform. This approach will ensure better manageability, more economical voice communications, and greater opportunities for innovation to customers.

For example, a PC software makes it possible to see if someone is available before you call them, send them an instant message, or an e-mail. This ability to see a person's availability is what we call "presence," and it can be easily embedded in office productivity as well as line-of-business applications. Calling someone can be as simple as clicking on his/her name. With another click, one can initiate a Web conference or a video call. Unified Communications enable teams to work together in real-time and increase personal productivity. It keeps people in sync, enabling them to share information quickly and easily, allow teams to work together from distributed offices, while on the move, and thereby expedites business decisions.

Further, with a software-based approach, IT departments get a uniform platform to deliver communications support. In fact, Gartner has endorsed the strength and completeness of the software-led approach for Unified Communications in its recently published "Magic Quadrant 07 for Unified Communications: A Competitive Mapping of Multiple Vendors". The importance of this is underlined in the fact that the cost of branded IP handsets-typically 40-45% of the cost of telephony installation-continues to remain an obstacle for companies adopting IP telephony, states a Gartner report. And, a rich partner ecosystem that can provide telephony hardware, handsets, and devices will further reduce the deployment cost.

World over, companies like Volvo, France Telecom, Qualcomm, Godrej, and AMD are benefiting from the software–based unified communications platforms. They have streamlined secure communications to end users, increased operational efficiency, and have built a future-ready communication foundation for their organizations.

World over and in India, companies like Volvo, France Telecom, Qualcomm, AMD, Godrej, NIIT Technologies, and Marico Industries are benefiting from the software–based unified communications platforms. They have streamlined secure communications to end users, increased operational efficiency, and built a future-ready communication foundation for their organizations.

The market for unified communications is just emerging, and it is a big opportunity worth $40 bn worldwide. Software will be a key driver for this. Unified communications will be based on an open and secure, software platform that will create a broad eco-system. This eco-system is device and network agnostic, which will result in communications centering around people-not devices. And, it enables users to have one common identity and is cost-effective for IT to manage, with a single directory and common management.

Software will be the key to delivering this promise, resulting in a more powerful end-user experience, real productivity enhancements, return on investments, and compelling business value for customers and partners.

Vibhu Ranjan
(The author is business lead, Unified Communications, Microsoft India)
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in

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