white paper
UThe promise of unified communications (UC) is compelling—the ability to seamlessly integrate multiple types of rich media communications and visual collaboration tools into one IP-based open platform, easily shared by anyone in an organization from anywhere over any device.
Many organizations are eyeing UC as an opportunity to connect workers in a manner that meets their immediate needs and location, whether by real-time messaging, voice, presence, e-mail, or video conferencing. UC networking technology eliminates communications silos to deliver person-centric and presence-based communications with a single user identity across all modes.
Since undertaking a migration to such a promised land may seem daunting—especially for an enterprise that may still be running a legacy telephony infrastructure—it’s important to realize that while its benefits are compelling, UC is not a point product. Rather, it’s a vision and a strategy for how to achieve enhanced communications at a pace and budget that makes sense for your organization. The vision is fueling a technology transformation that will radically change the way businesses communicate forever.
While many companies may not be ready for a full-blown UC rollout, this white paper will delineate the benefits of a prudent phased UC strategy for organizations and discuss the steps required to build such capability for current and future applications.
Why Unified CommUniCations?
UC is not just about equipment and infrastructure.
Some prefer to label the UC vision as communications
enabled business processes (CEBP) to more effectively connote that the technology is aimed at bringing together the most important applications and making them better, transforming how businesses and people work and interact at all levels.
Today, workers and customers use a dizzying array of devices—PCs, smartphones, telephones, cell phones— to communicate via an equally dizzying choice of applications—e-mail, fax, voicemail, instant messaging, texting and, let’s not forget, the good old paper message slip.
The biggest problem with these standalone products is that the person initiating the communication too often is left wondering when, or whether, the message will get through. At its core, UC is the glue that pulls them all together with the aim of eliminating communication barriers, which frequently result in frustrations along with unnecessary delays. The UC platform should provide the initiator with immediate information about how best to communicate with the person being sought. A proper UC solution should also provide an intuitive interface to use so that it’s easy for users to navigate among multiple collaboration formats. This allows users to do their jobs in ways that are most natural to them, no matter when and where, and to shave precious time from tasks performed multiple times every day.
Custom Solutions Group
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