 | Issue: | Asia-Pacific II 2007 |
| Article no.: | 14 | |
| Topic: | Seamless interoperability from headphone to network | |
| Author: | Christian Tang-Jespersen | |
| Title: | Senior Vice President, Asia-Pacific | |
| Organisation: | GN Netcom | |
| PDF size: | 244KB |
About author
Christian Tang-Jespersen is the Senior Vice President, Asia-Pacific, of GN Netcom. Prior to this role, Mr Tang-Jespersen was responsible for the Global OEM business within GN Mobile. Previously, Mr Tang-Jespersen worked for the parent company, GN Store Nord, as Vice President and General Counsel, responsible for corporate and general counsel, corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property rights, risk management, insurance and business strategy. Prior to GN Store Nord, Mr Tang-Jespersen worked as an attorney at law firms in Copenhagen and Brussels, and as lobbyist out of Brussels for Denmark’s largest lobbying organisation. Mr Tang-Jespersen holds a Masters Degree in Law from the University of Copenhagen and Brussels.
Article abstract
Unified communications is the next step after convergence. Convergence joins the capabilities of networks, devices and services to provide a wide range of cost, performance and functionality benefits. The one thing most converged solutions don’t provide is a unified view and a unified service that brings all these functions together for the user. Unified communications provides seamless interoperability between all a user’s mobile and fixed systems for voice, data, multimedia and messaging at home, on the go, and in the office.
Full Article
Unified Communication, UC, puts people at the centre of communication to create more personal and intuitive communication. As a key component of UC, there are a growing number of convergence headsets and devices, such as Bluetooth multipoint and plug-and-play connectivity for PC and fixed line. The headset is at the core of UC as the central enabler for true convergence, offering seamless connectivity between multiple devices. Multipoint supported by a headset offers two simultaneous connections, for example: • Desk phone via a Bluetooth hub and a Bluetooth mobile phone; • Two Bluetooth mobile phones; and, • Music player and mobile phone. Dual connectivity can offer: • Wireless headset desk and IP telephony with 100 meters of range; and, • Seamless switching between desk phone and PC. Although companies have been spending large chunks of their IT budgets on ensuring that their systems talk seamlessly with each other, not many companies have invested in examining ways to improve human-intensive communication processes. UC brings together all aspects of communication as workers rely on multiple technologies and become increasingly mobile. This enables greater productivity and connectivity while reducing administrative burdens and costs for IT departments. As the levels of complexity are removed from communications, headsets will supply the means to improve communication efficiency through hands-free technology and products. One headset gives consumers freedom of choice to: • Take a call or listen to music; • Use with mobile phone or desk phone; and, • Switch between desk phone and computer for IP communications. UC is the key to the next step in driving productivity across the board by providing connectivity in our mobile workforce environment. An effective UC solution will enable a single platform that combines email, voice mail and fax messages. Additionally, it will allow mobile users to communicate efficiently with the use of alternate devices such as mobile phones, landline or a computer. Another added advantage is enhanced security. As the workspace goes virtual, and the line between personal and professional smudges, employees may use readily available consumer-oriented software and services that are not necessarily the safest, thus putting their companies at risk. UC solutions can collaborate with these more ‘public’ services and provide users with safe alternatives in order to bring down risk. The challenges that UC brings include the need to understand fully the potential of the technology in order to maximise returns. IT teams are naturally hesitant to incorporate changes within their legacy systems when their responsibilities are not clearly defined or justified. It will be equally important for organisations to assess their business and workgroup needs first, before making any decisions on UC deployment. The various IP telephony elements used in a UC deployment include the likes of voice messaging, customer contact routing and IVR, interactive voice response, self-service applications. A growing number of companies are migrating to IP networks, greatly simplifying the full-scale deployment of UC. As far as UC rendering any traditional telephony elements obsolete is concerned, anything that does not expand on functionality, and work well within an integrated communication environment, is likely to get sidelined. It is important for technologies, including any telephony elements, to stay relevant by evolving with today’s fast-changing work environment and business needs. The challenges to implementing UC solutions include the intricacies of multiple new technology integrations and the considerations of how they converge with legacy infrastructures. These integrations and convergences include: • IP data networks for real-time and non-real-time applications, wired and wireless; • Seamless 3G and WiFi wireless access and call transfer to wired devices; • Platform-independent software application servers; • Device-independent, interface independent, client software for user application functions; • Integrating business contact routing with personal availability and accessibility routing; • Converging individual contact access across wireless services and internal enterprise servers (CPE, customer premise equipment); • Managing one-number/one-mailbox business contacts for both voice and text on a single mobile device that will also serve the end user for personal (i.e., consumer) mobile communications services; • P-based user presence and availability management across all contact modalities, federated across networks and enterprises; • Multi-modal, device-independent, self-service business applications for both internal enterprise users and customers; • Security management across all forms of business communication access; • Business activity management reporting across all forms of contact and communications at individual user levels, group levels, and customer contact levels; • Using presence management for ‘virtual’ customer assistance/help desk support within the enterprise, across enterprises, across contact modalities, and from outsourced staffing services and distributed experts; and, • Differentiating and reconciling business contact priorities from individual end user availability priorities. It is crucial that all migration/integration approaches go through exhaustive pre-planning. It is imperative that the newly integrated IP-based communications system is capable of supporting and interoperating with existing legacy infrastructures. It is also imperative that vendors educate enterprise customers to minimize and define the technology assimilation gap. Unified Communications is a new concept, and its implications are far more over-arching than mere convergence. The goal is seamless interoperability between various systems, including VoIP, IP telephony, multimedia applications and messaging tools. In some organisations, elements of UC already exist, while others are still in development. Today, several vendors offer components of a UC solution and this picture continues to build as the market moves towards producing a complete UC solution. Today, as their operations become more complex and the need to communicate via different systems and interfaces become commonplace, companies are increasingly adopting UC. Another important factor when it comes to UC adoption is the virtualisation of the workplace; geographically dispersed teams and mobile executives expect their communications infrastructure to support their individual needs. Industries that stand to benefit the most from UC are all those that rely heavily on multi-stakeholder communication to disseminate product/organisation/business information. The need could either be internal (geographically spread teams, interdepartmental communications, mobile workers) or external (customer service, sales force, contact centres). Examples include: • Healthcare; • Banking and finance; and, • Retail. UC can create tremendous operational efficiencies for firms in any industry that relies extensively on communications. The relative newness of UC can influence the degree to which some organisations adopt a complete UC solution. UC and collaboration, UCC, solutions will have a significant role to play for organisations in the future. The journey towards a fully unified communications and collaboration approach may be a long one for some organisations. Some recent announcements we have seen confirm the trend towards UC: • Polycom to acquire SpectraLink (enterprise Voice over Wireless Local Area Network, VoWLAN, device player); • Cisco to acquire Five Across (Connect Community Builder lets companies populate its Websites with content such as blogs and podcasts); and, • Adobe acquired Antepo, Inc. (developer of the Antepo Open Presence Network, OPN, System, a hosted platform for enterprise IM and presence capabilities), and acquired assets of privately held Amicima, Inc., which develops Internet protocols for client-server and peer-to-peer networking that supports one-to-one and group communication, quality-of-service prioritization and latency control for multimedia communication. As big players focus more intensely on this growing market, it will not be a surprise to see more aggressive mergers and acquisitions take place in this sector. Each of these will take the vendors closer to being able to offer end-to-end solutions or shrink-wrapped solutions.
