IT as a BUSINESS Unit, Not a Cost Center

My colleague John posted on a very real skills gap, however I see it a bit differently. Sure there are technical challenges that cross-functional teams may not have seen before, but that’s where an experienced consultant can assist. Often server teams and telecom teams who never had need to communicate will have to work together to implement a successful technical solution. That only tells part of the story.

The more significant skills gap, as I see it, is the ability to align a UC solution to business needs and processes. Most IT departments have a ton of technical knowledge, but not much business acumen. Again, enter an experienced consultant. This consultant needs to bridge the gap from IT to the business which can be as wide as the Grand Canyon in some organizations. They also need to act as a bit of a project manager keeping the various technical groups working smoothly together for the duration of the project. For example, the average UC project I work on will involve resources from the server team, the network team, the telecom team, the security team and representative from various application and business groups.

Thankfully offshoring for anything but the most basic IT functions has fallen from favor. Most IT offshoring groups lack both the advanced technical expertise and have literally no clue on the business aspects to pull off a project of this scale.

A consultant can often be of the most help during the planning phase. Although Microsoft has released their OCS planning tool for server counts and role definition, it lacks the intelligence to review network requirements or business integration. These concerns need to be raised during the early planning phase and act as a business driver for the project instead of being added after the fact. As John mentioned, the vendors have been slow to pick up the ball around a “full” deployment as well. They sell into IT silos and lack the higher level view needed to take UC ROI to real, tangible levels around business process improvement. So far it’s like bouncing a ball with a flat spot. It works at certain angles, but eventually it comes up lacking. I really enjoy working with customers to show the value beyond IM and insourced web conferencing. You can see everyone’s eyes light up as they “get it”. It’s a brave new world and unified communications is more than just a technology, or suite of technologies, it’s a new paradigm.