A united future?

From business and consumers alike, the demand today is for instantly accessible information that is always at our fingertips. Unified Communications seeks to streamline the way we deal with each other. In a perfect world you will never have to worry about missing a call because you’re away from your desk or not receiving an important email because you’re out of the office. But how realistic are the huge expectations surrounding Unified Communications and how far will we have to go before industry comes close to achieving them?

CXO asked Urban Gillström, Head of Ericsson Enterprise, Jean-Matthieu Tilquin, Head of Product Management at Arkadin, Jim Morrison, founder and CEO of i-mate and Ian Groves, Sales Director for Unified Communications at Avaya what they thought.

CXO. Unified Communications offer great promise. What are the business benefits of a unified communications approach? Are there any particular challenges that need to be overcome for this promise to be realised?

UG: We see that mobilization of business processes and information are critical when improving business productivity. Ericsson enters the Unified Communication arena from a true mobility perspective. This is about process efficiency, collaboration, real time information using any device, anywhere and anytime. The user is the centre. If you want to achieve the productivity and process improvement that Unified Communications promise, you need to understand that people are spending less time in the office. Increasingly they are spending more time with customers, in remote offices or even working from home. Enterprises want to improve business performance, growth and productivity with mobility, but without jeopardizing cost control or security.

Any new technology must comply with the mandatory demands on cost control and security. Having a clear mobility strategy is crucial when handling necessary changes such as implementing a unified communications environment. From the Ericsson perspective, we are taking a proactive approach with enterprises. Along with doing an audit of their communications and trying to help them understand the spending on mobility, we use our consultants to help them see the business process change opportunity that is available

JT: The rise and development of communication technologies during the last century has enabled the business world to move towards globalisation. Geographical boundaries have disappeared while productivity and reactivity have become key governing factors. Traditional communication methods have at the same time driven and adapted to these drastic changes and have become what we call Unified Communications.

Unified Communications describes the seamless convergence and integration of multiple communication methods such as voice, data and video. These new generation tools enable a richer communication experience with increased reactivity and mobility. In other words, they offer global corporations tools to improve the way they do business. But more work needs to be done on the simplicity and cost effectiveness of unified communications tools before they can become truly mainstream.

JM: The benefits are mainly making people more efficient so they can work anytime, anywhere. This allows greater amounts of ‘face time’ for the salesforce. The drawback is having all your data available all the time. i-mate provides a solution that gives users instant access to the specific file or data they need to help make decisions, shorten sales cycles and improve customer service.

IG: Unified Communications provides a single common interface to communication tools, business applications and transactions regardless of an individual’s location or communications device. In other words, Unified Communications is the portal to Intelligent Communications, embracing unified access technology at the desktop, mobile device and desk phone. It allows end users to navigate and orchestrate their business applications and transactions across multiple interfaces of their choosing.

The technology allows companies to simplify interactions with their customers by giving them single number access. At the same time it gives enterprises the ability to increase the availability of their associates using features such as find-me/follow-me services or simultaneous ringing of desk and mobile phones. With enhanced access to key members of the organisation comes the capability to improve execution of customer requirements.

Decision making will be improved and there will be an enhancement to the general workflow as a result of the frequency, intensity and richness of communications. The ease of collaboration provides the basis for higher value networking between associates that increases the velocity of decision making It also decreases general collaboration costs and can impact positively on mobile costs and the implications of missed or delayed communications.

CXO. What new and emerging technologies are driving change in the communications industry? How are quality, speed and reliability issues being addressed?

UG: Session based communication (SIP), drives the opportunity to start collaboration and to use multiple multimedia services in a seamless manner. This must be seen in perspective together with IMS, a 3GPP public standard. The integration between private and public domains is key. Our focus on IMS aims at providing a total communication solution for the enterprises where both business users and public users have the same communication interface and multimedia possibilities.

IMS is an enabler that provides a secure communication and collaboration, both inside the enterprise as well as with other external parties. The communication scope is widening and a full deployment of a mobile Unified Communications solution will involve not only the enterprise IT but will also have a major impact on the operator environment. Many operators are now rolling out HSPA in their 3G networks, making mobile broadband a reality. This means new opportunities for business users and a speedier adoption of various business applications well beyond e-mail.

JT: Internet Protocol (IP) is and will remain the corner stone of Unified Communications. This protocol has enabled communications to converge at all levels of the transmission chain, from hardware to network to application. Today the fixed and mobile network still remains the portion to fully converge. Delivering Unified Communications requires speed and quality of service over the WAN (Wide Area Network) network. This can be achieved only through expensive Quality of Service enabled networks, not the Internet. In that respect, the cost of such networks still remains a challenge when building a business case for Unified Communication in many enterprises.

JM: Reliability and speed are getting better across all mobile networks and getting to the stage where mobile speed is faster than a landline.

IG: With Avaya’s layered architecture approach to Unified Communications, quality, speed and reliability of all communications are protected. We appreciate that customers have come to expect these attributes. Our layered architecture approach allows us to understand what each layer of that architecture is there to do, and what it delivers. It enables us to ensure that each added layer of software application does not usurp other services, and allows us to ensure that for example secure call control is still in order.

CXO. Elsewhere in this magazine, BT’s Aaron McCormack highlights how US organisations spend four times as much as their European counterparts on collaboration and communication technologies. Why is this a concern for European companies operating in a globalised economy?

UG: The fast uptake of broadband, particularly mobile broadband, and the growing number of mobile subscriptions provides new ways to find information. This transforms how work is done. It’s about combining the development in the US on the communication and collaboration side with what is happening in the certain European countries that are at the forefront of mobile working. For companies operating in a global economy it’s important to combine this successfully to stay competitive.

JM: It is a concern because it means that Americans have better real-time access to important data. That gives them a major edge over their European competition.

IG: Work by the Yankee Group suggests that companies experience between a 15 and 20 percent productivity gain if communications modes can be integrated into standard business applications. If companies in one sector or geographical area fail to take advantage of the productivity gains that Unified Communications offers, then they will be at a significant competitive disadvantage compared with those that do.

CXO. What needs to be done to try and drive communications/collaboration technology uptake in Europe, and what part will your company play in this?

UG: Ericsson is a global player with operations in 140 countries. That means we actually have people in all those geographies interacting with customers and learning how they want to develop their enterprise communications. That’s an amazing sensing capability. It is clear that different aspects of communications are being embraced and developed at a different pace in different parts of the world. Ericsson was an early evangelist and enabler of fixed-mobile integration and we will continue to deliver enterprise solutions with a holistic view on mobility. More and more people are spending time away from the ordinary desk or workplace. Unified communications must fully support the mobile way of working.

JT: The adoption of Unified Communications within Europe can be managed through three leverages: Market Maturity, Ease of Use and Price. These principles drive Arkadin philosophy when developing and offering products to our customers. We realize that we have a role to play in terms of increasing market maturity. We have to make unified communications known and understood by our users. They have to clearly realise the benefit they can gain in terms of productivity and efficiency by using on the communication tools that we offer to them.

Also, we maintain the highest level of simplicity and ease of use for the most competitive price. This applies to all products we bring to the market and is vital for end user adoption. To enable this, we have developed a set of Integration Tools that enables Arkadin products to be fully and seamlessly integrated within our customers’ IT environment whether they be Intranet, ERP’s, CRM’s, Telephony or Software systems.

JM: The tools have to be simple and work across national boundaries. i-mate provides multi-language product solutions and customised devices for our corporate clients’ needs, no matter where the company is based or what languages they use.

IG: Avaya Unified Communications leverages our market leading technology by integration with a wide ecosystem of partner solutions. The Avaya technology that Unified Communications is built on includes enterprise communication servers for IP telephony, messaging and conferencing. Award winning solutions for unified messaging, mobility, and speech access are also part of the Avaya advantage. These solutions help organizations become more customer focused, increase business agility and address productivity at the enterprise and task level, improving revenue or profit per employee. They also have the effect of improving operational efficiency, lowering costs and reducing business risk.

CXO. As mobile and wireless devices become increasingly ubiquitous, are security issues becoming more of a concern? How is sensitive personal and company data being protected?

UG: It’s all about the company controlling what devices inside the organisation are being used for. It’s important to implement a mobility strategy and solutions for device and remote management, independent of device being used. Security is a natural part when managing your corporate PC, so it should be a natural part of the corporate communication strategy right down to mobile devices.

The new generation employees and customers, ‘the digital natives’, have new communication patterns. They use using consumer applications such as Skype and MSN to communicate, which has impacted on traditional business environments. I believe that organizations need to find a way to satisfy their security needs while enabling employees to be online and supporting their different communication demands. We at Ericsson take a serious approach on security and other company policy related issues, choosing the appropriate mechanism and protocols needed to make sure that personal and company information and communication is being properly protected.

JT: Mobile devices like phones, PDA’s and laptops will increasingly become the unique convergent devices you will use in the future. Convergence will definitely increase the concentration of critical information into a single device, and therefore the security aspect will become a key decision factor when making a choice for a Unified Communications solution.

JM: Security is a major concern across all industries. i-mate products come with built-in applications to address the all important data and hardware security issue. i-mate Suite allows a company’s device fleet to be completely remotely controlled by the company IT administration. If the device is lost or stolen, no data can be accessed other than by the IT administrator and the device cannot be reused by anyone ever again, rendering it worthless.