Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

Older: Digital Movie Storage - A Problem or Chicken Little Again?
Newer: Being Green - Easy or Hard??

Unified Communications Definitions 1.0

By Phil July 7, 2008 4:17 pm

Over the past month I have been working on directions in UC and have come to a few key conclusions about this transformation.   I thought a series of blog entires around this subject would be interesting. I will probably do three or four fairly quickly, starting with definitions, moving into market opportunity, and closing with how Nortel sees it's role moving forward.

First, UC is not just about communications, but rather is focused to how communications integrates with applications. While we have been talking about this, I think we should stop talking about "unifying" different communications modalities and rather focus on the application integration component. The key reason is that this is the next big evolutions in the value of technology to business, not just having my desk and cell phone ring together (something I have had for 4 years), but how integrating communications into applications will enable us to change business processes. Much as the integration of technology enabled business to change processes in teh 90's, integrating information and interaction together will allow another fundamental shift. Bob Hafner has indicated he believes this to be true, and some analysis indicates it really can transform businesses.

Next post will be on the forms/paths to UC and how they are different.

Categories: Unified Communications, Multimedia, Technology, Architecture, Trends Trackbacks (2)

Tags: No Tags

Trackbacks/Pings

  1. […] Part 1: Unified Communications Definitions 1.0 […]

    July 15th, 2008 at 3:00 pm from Nortel Blog: Enterprise Technology » Blog Archive » UC for Collaboration

  2. […] UC is not just about communications and it is also overhyped - I totally agree. Up to the point of there’s no such thing as UC. […]

    August 11th, 2008 at 6:35 am from VoIP from around the net: July 28, 2008 | VoIP Survivor

Comments

  1. Phil,

    Your definition of UC is interesting to me. I have a question though, if communications is itself an application, then why not Unified Applications? This may be a question of semantics, but maybe not. It may reflect a notion that somehow the communications application is “more equal” than the rest. My experience is that the most important application is contextual and temporal and that there is no implied hierarchy

    I agree with you that unifying the underlying modalities is not terribly relevant to the end user. The only benefit I see to this effort is possibly to hide the number of interfaces needed to make something work. No company or standards body (especially my pet peeve; the IETF) seems capable of providing a standardized set of primitives that hide the myriad of superfluous [vendor driven] differences in implementations of even a single modality..

    Until there is some serious progress in this area, I think the consumer and the service provider will resist these “fundamental shifts”.

    July 8th, 2008 at 9:28 am by many

  2. I think you have hot on the semantic issue. While we started by talking about Unified COMMUNICATIONS, it is in fact the Convergence of Information and Interaction. The challenge is how to bring those modalities together and integrate into the information application.

    From the user perspective it needs to be both simple and from an interface perspective homogeneous.

    July 10th, 2008 at 12:47 am by Phil

  3. Phil, I am gassing you mean “hit” rather than “hot”?

    Anyway the term “communications” in the context of nortel is loaded in ways it is not in the dictionary. That was my essential point.

    When you speak of simple, I think you are also missing my point. These days very few equipment manufactures understand the complexity of network integrators and service providers domain. Launching a service across multiple vendors with products at different maturity levels and operating at different layers of the network is much more challenging than a single vendor lab environment. Experience tells me that most equipment vendors including nortel need to understand much more about their customers business, how it is changing and the pain points before they talk too much about how UC (or UA) can transform their business.

    July 11th, 2008 at 1:41 pm by many

  4. My humble believe and customer based observation is that UC is actually creating more proprietary islands. Merley proliferating the illusional promise of VOIP 1.0 earlier this decade. IP tel was supposed to bridge the islands of voice and merely extended the proprietary nature of voice. DCP is now DCP323, Nortel with Unistim, Cisco with SCCP etc. Now I am seeing SIP with proprietary extentions. Also, throw encryption on top of SIP to argue that unless you have the encryption key from a vendor you are lock out of what is in that packet. Combine this with competition and vendor’s “versions” of what UC means to them (the cobbling of some vendors amazing even a grunt like me) to cloud how one could EVER get to unifying a business process given all the islands. I don’t see and unification other than the obvious MSFT desktop which is not novel.

    July 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm by Joe

  5. You are right - I meant hit…in the interest of keeping the flow I will not edit it!!!

    Your comments are very true Joe, we are challenged by the inability of the standards bodies to define interoperability beyond the transport. I do believe we will get there, but it is a real challenge. We are seeing trunk level SIP interoperability, the real extensions are around desktop features and enhanced presence.
    The whole encryption arena is a huge challenge to have security with open interoperability.
    I agree that we need to get much closer to our customers. The Orlando Regional Healthcare discharge system is an example of how we can use technology to dramatically impact a business process and the operation of the business. You only get to that point by working closely with the customer at the business level.

    July 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm by Phil

  6. I think your SOA push and ICA relationship with MSFT will allow you to get closer to the customer and in turn grant you unprecidented views into business processes. At that point you (Nortel) can truly prescribe how IT and UC can transform business process. Keep up the fight Phil!

    July 17th, 2008 at 3:13 pm by Joe

  7. Hi

    Unified communication i did an application called digital assistant which is a smaller version of IOBI by verizon which enables you to receive calls in your desktop using an open source stack. You will also get a realtime popup when you get a incoming call by configuring signals from your switch.

    It was an interesting piece of work done in 2 months using 1 developer and myself. We are talking about it why cant we unify it. IOBI currently has 3000 features. My idea is to market with the mostly used 30 features and at a low fixed monthly rate.

    Thanks and regards
    Raj

    July 24th, 2008 at 9:07 am by rajamanickam

  8. Thanks for the comments

    Joe - I agree, the world is changing and Nortel is incresdibly well positioned to develop a true leadership role. Our combination of technology, products, people, and partners seems unique. As the later posts in this series will show, I believe that US is truly a major inflection in the overall IN formation and interactions industry and it will have profound impacts on how we do business and how we work and play.

    Raj, that is one of the exciting transformation that is happening. With teh advent of new tools, standards, and technologies, what used to be economically inviable is now becoming both practicable and deliverable. This will change forever that interface. BTW, has anyone used the T-Mobile@home IP integration? I have been saying to the wireless guys for 3 years that having a simple IP extension off my wireless phone with skins that match functionality would be a killer approach. I wonder about the functionality and the uptake…..

    July 24th, 2008 at 12:05 pm by Phil

Leave a Reply