The Buzz On Unified Communications (UC)

November 18, 2008

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If you’ve been to a telecom industry trade show or read a business magazine lately, you’ve no doubt encountered the latest over-used buzzword: “Unified Communications,” or often just “UC” for short. But what is it? While there is no standard definition of UC, it really isn’t much of a new philosophy or idea. Unified Communications is simply the convergence of multiple applications; smushing products together to increase usability and functionality: like combining graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows to make much more compact, less gooey, and more delicious s’mores. The communications example is sending voice mail to your email box, integrating instant messages into other applications, tying your address book into all of your office systems, and make it a snap for you to contact anyone, at any time, from nearly any application. UC is just integration, it is also just part of our natural evolution as an industry. Products that do more with less overhead and expense have always been popular choices.

A year ago, everyone was talking about Voice over IP (VoIP) and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which deliver phone calls over the Internet instead of on copper lines like traditional phone service. But it was that advance which has made Unified Communications even easier and more attractive. Today, everything is IP - your data and your voice calls - making it possible for computer companies like Microsoft and Google to begin replacing telephone companies like Lucent and AT&T as the innovators in communications.

Today, it is possible to use a single system for all of your communications needs: Phone, Fax, Email, Calendar, Address Book, Instant Message, SMS, and much more can all be integrated neatly into nearly any application you want. Want to call a client? Just click his name and select if you want to call, IM, Text, or email him. Cool. And that’s just the easy stuff.

As application developers try to one-up each other, text to speech (and speech to text, for that matter) are working their way into applications as well. Dial by speaking a name; record conversations and have them automatically emailed to you as a text document; combine individual calls on the fly to create a conference call, and then add video so everyone can see each other. Not enough? Well, let’s just add a virtual whiteboard so everyone can interact at a deeper level.

Unified Communications is a no-brainer. With or without the UC buzz, this was the direction that communications was headed. Phones were becoming PCs and PCs were becoming communications devices before anyone slapped “UC” on a trade show booth. PBXs were becoming contact centers. Microsoft was becoming a solutions provider. And Google was becoming everything. The world was a complicated mess of applications which were already in need of a little integration.

And if you think that UC doesn’t apply to you and that you’ll never see such fantastical devices in your lifetime, think again. They are here, and they are all around you. Not just for the enterprise but for consumers as well. All one needs to do is look at the new Google phone or the iPhone as an example. Voice, Messaging, Email, Photo, Internet, Games, Music, Video . . . Unified Communications is here and you can hold it in the palm of your hand. Even my grandmother can use an iPhone without having to open an instruction manual.

And just like fashion, by the time grandma knows about it, it isn’t cool anymore. So what’s the next buzzword all you marketing types will overuse next? I vote for “hyper-connected,” “uber real,” or “supercalifragilisticexpial-IP.”

Written by Todd · Filed Under Business, Featured, Internet, Mobile, Telecom, VoIP/SIP