First emerging in the 1990s, Unified Communications was a product of the proliferation of different technologies – such as voicemail and email – integrating with phones and computers to provide one, single messaging system.
Only in the last decade, however, in line with the growth of communication channels, including instant messaging, has unified and cloud communications developed as a clear trend.
Now, for businesses across the globe, unified and cloud communications have become a vital part of the everyday. It supports flexible, cost-effective communications, as well as the burst in popularity for ‘work at home’.
As we end one decade and start another, now is a good moment to reflect on the development of unified comms to date, its challenges and opportunities, and what the future holds.
What progress has been made within unified comms?
As an industry we are nowhere near where we thought we would be with the transition from traditional telephony. There is still a much larger percentage that still resides on traditional telephony systems than we would have anticipated as well as scenarios where businesses have just connected their existing phone system via SIP rather than undergoing a complete transition. I would say the reason for this is because, as an industry, we have failed to communicate the inherent benefits of ‘cloud’ to the end-user.
In terms of progress, today, unified communications is intertwined with the cloud – to power flexible, cost-effective business communications. From calls and email to web chat, video, WhatsApp and Twitter – all on a single, hosted cloud platform – this is unified communications at its best, with seamless integration between cloud, data and voice ensuring better collaboration, scalability, accessibility, efficiency and more.
This approach enables people to access collaborative communications tools wherever they are, on any device.
What challenges are customers typically looking to solve by using unified comms?
I would say a key challenge that unified comms can solve is around the simplicity of management piece. Traditional telephony requires technical engineers and limits the amount of on-site expertise that can be available whereas unified communications allows IT Managers full self-service control and in-life changes of the phone system. We’ve also seen our larger customers looking to unify their communications technology from across separate sites into a central product that sits on the cloud.
In addition, users have reached the maximum capabilities of their current phone system and they are looking to integrate increased functionalities such as social media which is increasingly used for direct messaging – companies and consumers alike can now integrate different communication methods into a single environment.
How difficult is it to implement unified comms? Are there any common issues?
Where we have struggled in the past is with projects that have been run solely by IT Managers with little input from other divisional heads. Conversely, it has worked really well when we have been able to engage with key stakeholders from across the organisation to ensure we understand their requirements and we have then been able to deliver a solution that has bespoke functionalities for each area of the business.
In order to find the right price/functionality mix for customers it is useful to have key standardised building blocks such as propositions with a fixed monthly fee based on standard deliverables plus the capabilities to flex these solutions to meet specific customer needs. Fixed propositions don’t give any flexibility while completely bespoke solutions will be expensive and could suffer from an established service wrap.
