Broadband Developments

I ran into this post today from Ken Camp at RealTime Unified Communications. Ken links to Art Rosenberg’s Unified View.  The question is the “what is the value of unified communications?”

Art and Ken come to the same conclusion ..”This is only the beginning. Unified communications isn’t the end, it’s just a milestone along the way to a more mature environment of Communications Enhanced Business Process (CEBP) integration. And CEBP isn’t an end either, because all the GUI changes and integration of voice and video interaction are still on the horizon to completely alter the way people interact with computerized resources…”

I have been trying to get my arms around this topic.  I get business value of UC in principle but it seems that UC is like a bunch of old VoIP concepts getting stuck in the sand.

I agree that’s its the beginning of a good ‘user and business experience’, but I’m not sure the right processes are being optimized.  I see the “presence” issue being a big problem to advancing the Unified Communications area.

I ran into this blog post by Ken Camp today that talks about what is happening in Unified Communications.

Unified Communications seems to be a hot buzzword for a new and improved VoIP sector or is it?

Ken writes.. “Unified communications is a buzz phrase like convergence. It means different things to different people. In today’s business environment, VoIP is prevalent. Jon asked is it really happening, but I’m often hard pressed to find places where it isn’t happening.

Unified Communitations is everywhere. Think about it. Voice services, video services and voice mail have converged onto a single unified platform - an IP network and our computers or other devices. Without unified communications, you have no social media - no Facebook, no Twitter, no comprehensive integration. Without unified communications, the web as we know it is a pipe dream. It had email and static web pages.

Web 2.0, the phrase we’ve all heard a million times is unified communications. Without UC, there could have been no Web 2.0. Unified communications, like VoIP, isn’t a product you write a check for and buy. It’s not a single product you implement and move on. It’s not as complex as vendors make it sound.

Unified communications in a foundation mindset of a single, integrated platform for doing business. Simple.”

Another blogger Alex Doyle at BroadSoft (not to be confused with BroadDev - this blog) weights in with a good analysis from my blog post on web 2.0 and Unified Communications.

This is a good conversation.  I am suggesting that UC shouldn’t be a closed solution from one vendor. In fact I see it that the hosting piece is critical for the customers to define their service modules. Having a bolted on fully integrated services isn’t the future. The hosting side is very exciting.

Web 2.0 is not fully understood but from a practical perspective the ‘lock-in’ in UC isn’t viable long term.

BroadDev blog picked the categories to cover UC, Virtualization, Security, and Web 2.0 because to me UC cuts across all those areas. We are so beyond PBX solutions in this arena.

Companies shouldn’t be forced into a choice they should choose the best for their environment.