VoIP Not Required for UC
First, let me say that it’s great to be writing about Unified Communications again! It’s such a dynamic industry, where there’s so much happening, and I love being a part of it, albeit independently now. I’m still here to give you my 2 cents.
Defining UC has been an important exercise this past year, but not really for us, in the industry. Defining UC is important for the potential customers (enterprises) who are looking to implement holistic UC solutions. Creating a definition is needed in order to dispel many of the erroneous myths out there today. It’s also critical because if enterprises don’t understand what UC consists of, then they won’t know what they need, and therefore may not utilize all the available collaborative tools efficiently and effectively.
I want to dispel the most important myth, and that is that VoIP/IP telephony is required for UC. In fact, it’s not. Part of my definition of UC is that either VoIP/IPT and/or presence can be the foundation of UC. Let me repeat that: VoIP/IPT is not a requirement for deploying UC. Enterprises need not wait for their VoIP/IP Telephony deployments to be finished in order to deploy UC. The rate of VoIP/ telephony deployments has slowed, as a result of unforeseen challenges and perhaps, not enough value for the upfront costs of deploying VoIP/IP telephony. Those enterprises that have taken the initiative have left it in the testing phase, and those who have not taken the initiative, have given it thought, but not moving forward. As a result, IP telephony is at a standstill. UC may be the catalyst that VoIP/IP telephony needs to reach mass adoption.
Part of the problem is that vendors are confusing the market. On one side of the camp, we the traditional infrastructure vendors, who are basing their UC platforms on VoIP/IPT, indicating that VoIP is the foundation of UC. On the other side of the camp, we have the non-traditional vendors, who believe VoIP/IPT is just another application on a UC platform. In their case, presence is really the foundation of a UC platform. The presence engine is the place from which all modes of communications can be launched. Neither one is right nor wrong, although each would like to say the other is inadequate.
The fact is that enterprises have different needs and requirements. Some enterprises would prefer to have their modes of communication be based on voice; others are more comfortable communicating through presence, and use voice as a secondary and tertiary form of communication. The good news for enterprises is that there is an option for everyone. There may even be instances in which traditional and non-traditional may have to share and co-habitate. That’s not a bad thing. We are still a long way from making that co-habitation seamless, and interoperability still has strides to make. This nirvana is only as impossible as vendors make it. It’s time they all learn to play in the same sandbox if we want to see UC take off.
Hi Vanessa
Good to see that you are writing again.
Regarding your post, which I think is interesting; I don’t think that the blame necessarily should be directed at just the vendor community (even though there are those who are overtly trying to confuse the market). As you are aware I do many briefings with analysts on UC and the first question that I ask is ‘What is your definition of UC’ as frankly they can be really quite different. It therefore begs the question that if the analyst community is unable to agree amongst themselves (and it is they that are also influencing enterprise purchase decisions) then it is not surprising that there is confusion.
Our view is that a more pragmatic approach needs to be taken. I think everyone would agree that UC is not, in itself, a product however Presence and VoIP/IPT are both integral components of the larger mix. I also do not think that enterprises will reap all the benefits of UC with a TDM based communications architecture. Today, it is not possible to select a single vendor that can provide a complete end-to-end fully featured UC solution and UC is and will generally be implemented gradually – whether by functional department or by individual roles within an enterprise.
I am not hung up about whether Presence or VoIP/IPT is the foundation of UC and I think it has become a topic that has been blown out of all proportion and is really not that interesting outside of those who are close to the industry. As you say it is about choice and is defined by the needs of a particular customer and that customer will weigh the relative benefits of the components of UC as they apply to that customer’s business. Two things are true for sure: 1) is that VoIP/IPT is now proven and that a full UC solution still has to prove itself to be ready for mainstream adoption; and 2) enterprises will look to deploy the individual components of UC in an order that is dependent upon which component(s) will deliver long-term benefits with a decent ROI/TCO model to their business.
Lastly, I don’t think that UC has had much effect on shipments of VoIP/IPT. It is true in the case of the US but worldwide shipments are still growing. I think that the turmoil in the macro-economic climate has more to do with the US performance!
Disclosure: This post is written by Simon Gwatkin and I work at Mitel.
It is true that you do not need VoIP for UC, but I find hard to use UC without VoIP; simply I think there is no ROI without VoIP. I agree with the first comment.
Also, somewhere I found the following. I quote it because these are not my words and I did not search for the search:
“There is not a universal definition of what constitutes Unified Communication and each vendor may have its own definition of what components are parts of an UC solution”
“To be considered a UC system it must provide specific functionality and have these characteristics:
• Integration with voice capabilities providing functions such as click-to-call or click-to-conference. The voice capabilities can be peer-to-peer or traditional telephony, but the call control or telephony element must be integrated.
• Presence is the cornerstone of UC, and a UC solution must have presence capabilities, generally via a presence server. Presence capabilities can refer not only to IM or online presence but to telephony presence as well, indicating whether someone is on-hook or off-hook. In mobile applications, presence may be based on the mobile device being turned on or off.
• A unified user interface, or a UC client, providing a way for the user to access the UC capabilities—from the desktop, mobile device, Web portal, business process application, and so on.
”
Regards,
-as
“
Vanessa,
I agree most with your statement: “UC may be the catalyst that VoIP/IP telephony needs to reach mass adoption.” VoIP on it’s own as simply a TDM phone replacement adds little value, except for cost reduction due to infrastructure consolidation. VoIP becomes a better value and provides better ROI when communication is embedded in the desktop, especially all the way into the application. Presence is a big help too, but I derive better value from call control, where I control (on demand) which device ring and when. Then the calling party doesn’t really need to worry about my presence. I publish one number and the findme/followme functionality makes sure I get the call on the right device.
Interesting post!
I live through a lot of these discussions every day where folks seem to mix the VOIP with Unified Communications.
As I have said several times in my blog, I think there are many elements that could claim to be the required foundation of unified communications. Most people now tend to agree presence is one of them. If you look at total traffic and communications volume, one could argue that email is the other one. To some organizations not so dependent on knowledge and information workers, maybe voice is more important than email. But all of this is really moot for two reasons.
First, unified communications means being able to tie together the most relevant communications modes in a seamless experience …. hence the word unified. Voice, email, conferencing, instant messaging ….. these are all critical elements. The end goal has all of these things wherever you start from.
Second, nothing is really a pre-requisite unless the vendor involved makes it so because of their solution architecture. For example, some vendors may need you to deploy certain configurations on your network (in cases sold by the same vendor for twice the total cost of the rest of the UC solution) to make their UC solution possible. This then makes the network implementation, often accompanied by VOIP, a pre-requisite. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Our approach has been to right size your network and overlay basic traffic management capabilities such as diffserv. After that, you decide what path you want to take at the application layer level. You want just IM or email, sure. You want to have conferencing only, that’s OK too. You want to have VOIP without conferencing or IM, that’s fine as well. Abstracting and seperating the network layer from the application layer frees people from the tyranny of these pre-requisites.
I do believe that presence (and a common contact list, in our case Active Directory) is a pre-requisite. At least for now. One day, we may move to a world where presence sits in the cloud and can be federated across boundaries. At that stage, you may not even need that to begin with. For now, no one has figured out to do that.