Beyond VoIP with UC
By Nikita Upadhyay
While IP telephony is moving into its second decade with enormous momentum, users have set their eyes on full convergence and voice-enabled applications. Increased network utilization has been the primary benefit of IP telephony. [Unified Communications (UC) is an attempt to build on IP telephony technology. Where IP telephony piggybacks voice on to a data network, UC adds presence, IM and other wrinkles to VoIP for a richer experience. – Editor]
One term, various definitions
UC is a collection of communication and collaboration capabilities such as IP telephony, video and Web conferencing, IM, unified messaging, etc., that are available as a unified platform to be deployed on an IP network.
Another definition says that UC is a class of applications and services designed to improve communications within the modern organization—to keep workgroups connected, enable them to collaborate effectively, streamline business processes, and provide a competitive advantage.
UC is the super-set of all IP-based communications accessed through a unified method. It involves the convergence of real-time and non-real-time business communication applications. It is a term used to describe the integration of business software and voice telephony technologies. The vision is to foster innovation and business agility by making it easier for people to find, reach and collaborate through its experience. In simple terms, it is about how you collaborate, about providing the means to collaborate.
Any which way you look at it, UC has become a catchphrase with a wide marketing tail behind it!
The communication divide
Historically organizations had to maintain two networks—one for voice and the other for data. [This was largely because the government wanted to protect the incumbent state-owned telcos from immediate completion by allowing voice to be carried on data networks. This was the rationale for allowing VoIP only in closed user group scenarios. That is all history today; however, as telecom rates are at historic lows and can compete with VoIP on a purely financial benefits basis. – Ed]
Now that legislation no longer prevents companies from integrating the experiences that one associates with the telephone—calls, voice mail, and conferencing and the work one does on a computer—documents, spreadsheets, instant messaging, email, and calendars, UC has the power to fundamentally change the way that people work.
Rationale for UC
Business and technology decision-makers are placing a high priority on providing optimized communication between remotely located knowledge workers and their teams. With a host of devices such as laptops, PCs, smartphones, VoIP desk phones, etc., business communication has become more complex. Despite investments in technology such as instant messaging and mobile devices, companies still have difficulties contacting key decision-makers in a timely manner.
“Enterprises can now easily integrate these capabilities into their core business processes and day-to-day operations to reap rich benefits. UC is a truly transformational technology as it can change the core processes of an enterprise leading to newer and better business models that lend itself easily to the demands of globalization,” stated Karthik Srinivasan, Principal Consultant, UC, Infosys Technologies.
The islands of communication technologies, products and services, are not capable of the flexibility needed in today’s world to deliver a scheduled or ad hoc conference that can seamlessly connect all needed participants, regardless of their location, voice or video endpoint or network connection.
“Moreover, poor communication also affects strategic initiatives such as lean or just-in-time manufacturing, supply chain optimization, and customer relationship management. It can have negative results in high-turnover environments that are highly dependent on customer service or in the perishable goods industries,” said Minhaj Zia, National Sales Manager, Unified Communications, Cisco India & SAARC.
These limitations are more significant today as the global trend is towards a mobile workforce, with 90% of employees working in locations other than their headquarters and 60-70% of employees working in different locations from their supervisors.
“With the advent of globalization, the need for UC has increased manifold. Today, it is imperative for a company’s infrastructure to enable its employees to connect anywhere, anytime irrespective of their location, endpoint or network connection,” expressed Yugal Sharma, Regional Director-India & SAARC, Polycom.
A convergence of social, economic, and technological trends is driving demand for new and innovative forms of visual communications—driving it into the mainstream and making it a central element of our personal and professional lives. The need for collaboration today is higher than ever.
Bullish about UC’s prospects
UC is the next step for companies that have already embraced VoIP. It brings together all the communication tools—from Web-based applications to IM and VoIP, under a single umbrella. It aims to bring about a sea change in the way businesses communicate and collaborate. It is an emerging class of applications and services designed to improve communications within the modern organization—to keep workgroups connected, enable them to collaborate effectively, and streamline business processes.
The rising adoption of UC is not only due to falling hardware and bandwidth prices, but also due to the increased availability of bandwidth along with the growing awareness about the benefits of conferencing technologies. “A recent IDC estimate showed that Avaya enjoys a market share of 29% of the total estimated UC market in India ($390 million in CY 2007). Voice (including IP telephony) contributes the maximum proportion of approximately 73% of this market,” stated Vivek Porwal, BU Head–Unified Communications, Avaya GlobalConnect.
Cisco contributes to 32% of the IP PBX solutions (Q1, CY 2008, IDC).
“The worldwide market size for UC in FY 2008 is expected to be $25 billion, and $34 billion including collaboration. The UC market is expected to grow by 19-20% CAGR through 2014-2015,” stated Parminder Saini, Industry Analyst, ICT Practice, Frost & Sullivan, South Asia & Middle East.
Frost & Sullivan forecasts put the total market size of UC in India at $670 million in 2008 (approximately), which is likely to grow to more than $1 billion by 2010. The majority of this includes enterprise IP telephony (almost 50%) and applications like presence, mobility and conferencing and collaboration are around 10%. The highest growth area is around applications that add the maximum value to end-users.
As the boundaries defining office workstation, home, etc., are blurring, communication cannot be restricted to desktops only. In the past one year, there has been a significant increase in adoption of UC solutions. Some verticals that are likely to adopt this technology in a big way in India over the next couple of years are the healthcare, education and government segments.
Key challenges while deploying UC |
- Mandatory upgrades from an existing network to handle UC’s bandwidth or security requirements.
- Interoperability across vendors who span the entire UC stack.
- Lack of a clear RoI model that spans benefits at both the business (value enhancements) and infrastructure (cost improvements) level.
- The IT infrastructure in India is yet to evolve to its optimum level and can cause a hindrance in the smooth functioning of UC technologies.
- It is a popular perception that virtual meetings can never replace the impact of meetings taking place in person.
- While implementing UC customers need to avoid taking a purely technology-centric view.
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Growth drivers
While most initial investments in UC are by enterprises, the increase in hosted UC offerings has now started enabling even smaller companies. “It considerably improves efficiencies by enabling a distributed workforce and rich customer support. The enterprise segment would be the prime adopter of this technology. [Further growth in India will take place] with the inclusion of the SMB segment. Many vendors are coming with a product portfolio that will specially target SMBs,” estimated Sanish KB, Research Analyst, Gartner.
Most UC vendors have now rolled out their SOHO and SMB offerings. “There has been huge acceptance by large enterprises in the IT-ITES and BSFI space. As far as SMBs are concerned, most organizations use basic communication systems. These corporate houses will need some time to take decisions on how to invest correctly on the right kind of technologies, which will boost employee productivity. SMBs will not go for the solution unless they feel sure about its positive impact and RoI. SOHO will be the last segment to adopt this technology,” informed Saini.
The reduced cost of communication and improved employee productivity make this technology appealing. Other prominent drivers include high availability of bandwidth with reduced costs and affordable VoIP solutions, which are a great replacement for traditional analogue systems. “UC holds promise in terms of increased RoI. The current growth is fuelled by the adoption of IP telephony in the government, BSFI, and services industry verticals, as well as Greenfield projects in emerging markets,” stated Porwal.
Factors instrumental in driving the movement towards it include the need of an increasing mobile workforce to have a mobile workspace. Simultaneously, presence in different locations and increased emphasis on cost controls are crucial factors. Today the proliferation of communications options has actually become a burden and all this needs to be simplified and integrated solutions are required.
Given the low level of penetration in the current stage, Frost & Sullivan anticipates a growth explosion (30% plus growth rates for the next two years) in the medium term beyond which the market growth rates will stabilize at 22%. The widespread availability of broadband networks at cheaper rates will also fuel growth. A recent report also anticipates that usage in the corporate segment will grow at a CAGR of 18.6% as against the CAGR of 21.7% in the education vertical and 21.6% in healthcare.
In a technology driven market, there are essentially three different parameters governing it—availability, reliability and affordability. Keeping this in mind, the government has announced the easy availability of ISDN and IP connectivity. Similarly, keeping pace with infrastructure development, availability and accessibility issues are fast being resolved in India.
Long-term benefits
UC offers the ability to improve how individuals, groups and companies interact and perform tasks. Its largest single value lies in its ability to reduce “human latency” in business processes. In some cases, servers may be consolidated, but more frequently, UC adds value to existing communications servers. Key technologies include Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), presence, email, audio and Web conferencing, voice mail, unified messaging and instant messaging (IM).
Sage Research has demonstrated a multitude of benefits—both in terms of employee time savings and financial savings. It stated that the organizations using UC clients enjoyed greater business communications convenience, and generated annual productivity gains of 3.5 days per year through business continuity impact.
Web conferencing reported a 30% reduction in conferencing expenses (by making integrated conferencing capabilities available in-house and on-network) and an average savings of $1,700 per month in travel costs. For others, the savings may simply come from having reduced hardware requirements and operating expenses.
It has further simplified interactions with customers through a single number and greater responsiveness with real and non-real-time communications from anywhere. The expanded communications capability has increased effectiveness and efficiency from lower collaboration and mobile expenses. This has also decreased opportunity cost of missed communications due to increased availability of employees. The initial cost of set up will act as a barrier to adoption of UC, but the long-term benefits that it offers are enough to ignore the initial cost.
The gains in support productivity that come with a single platform, single management system supporting both voice and video conferencing, provides a powerful justification for the unified conferencing product solution. Unified conferencing eliminates the need to make duplicate investments in voice and video conferencing equipment and upgrades. Training costs are lower for support and end-users. The business benefit of UC is still an evolving area with the quantification of benefits by CEBP (Communication Enabled Business Processes) still a work-in-progress.
Avoiding initial problems
Organizations must start by setting clear objectives and desirable results and focus on users as well as the job function that needs to be accomplished. They must take stock of their current infrastructure and usage pattern of various communication devices and applications. Companies should look in to identify the gaps in personal and team productivity tools available to both contact initiators and recipients. They should start implementation with high impact users and then spread it across the enterprise. They must measure the results and take corrective steps.
“Part of giving the choice for customers also lies in our ability to deliver an open architecture on which to build. With UC, there’s no question that the innovation has just begun, and there’s a lot more to come,” stated Zia.
The biggest challenge in terms of implementation of UC lies in the reliability, security and ease of maintenance of IP networks. The regulatory roadblocks have not been properly addressed. Among other important hindrances is the lack of availability of standard equipment across an enterprise, low awareness of new technologies like presence and other UC applications. Many users are not even aware of what is possible, and that they already have some or the other form of UC in place.
Companies should evaluate their needs and conduct pilots to figure out the most-effective ways of using UC, and which individuals and groups benefit the most from them. These trials will also provide feedback regarding which features are lacking, which are most useful, and it will allow a company to determine the value of UC.
Latest trends
Most users in an organization will adopt voice, video, Web and data conferencing when they understand its capabilities and enjoy the convenience that it offers in a hassle-free environment. Early adopters are a good source for user application stories. “Significant trends have been observed across industries like hospitality, IT-ITeS, BSFI, telecom, etc. There has been a commendable increase in the percentage of deployment of UC products and applications. Its scope in India is tremendous,” stated Porwal.
Another trend is the continued de-emphasis of desk phones. The combination of mobility solutions and applications enhanced with UC-based communication capabilities diminishes the need for desk phones. The future of UC is the capability of technologies to connect with anytime, anywhere through any set-up. The future will include collaboration on the video platform to the extent of usage similar to mobile phones today. Video communications could be the future of enterprise collaboration.
“Visual communication is becoming a critical business tool that can help companies address real-world challenges like increasingly dispersed workforces, globalization, rising fuel costs and the need to reduce carbon emissions. The key UC application beyond collaboration is issue resolution and support of voice and data mobility. Opportunities for portable applications will accelerate the move from ordinary cell phones to data devices,” stated Sharma.
“Applications of UC can play a major role in reducing the digital divide, improved e-governance, and better transparency in government investments in rural areas. Use of UC-enabled kiosks, along with the proliferation of mobiles to the deepest rural markets, can be key enablers for various government initiatives ensuring that the benefits reach the right person at the right time,” pointed out Srinivasan.
UC will transform business in the coming decade in the same way that e-mail changed the business landscape in the 1990s. However, despite the hype, UC adoption is still in its infancy for various reasons. The adoption of VoIP, while increasingly more widespread, has a long way to go. Many vendors who are marketing UC have varying heritages and are still working on getting different applications to work together in their own portfolios, let alone work with others where they have a product void. Industry standards are in varying stages of completion or are works in progress.
Zia foresees the long-term opportunities that will exist to design entirely new businesses and approaches using mobility, such as virtual manufacturing, virtual meetings, virtual logistics or new modes of operations, such as office-less business. We expect to see ERP and CRM applications linked to mobility down the line.
Fine-tuning the network for UC
A very important and essential requirement of UC is to have the network tested and fine-tuned for the applications that will run on top of it. While you plan to induct UC applications, it is critical that you place the network infrastructure optimally to deliver applications regardless of the accessing media or device.
Video will play a wide role in the acceptance of UC. Nevertheless, thoughtless implementation would lead to network congestion. The vendor must take care of the client usage so that bandwidth should not pose as a hurdle in the way of UC.
Sanish opined that organizations going in for UC must plan their networking infrastructure with care or it would slowly lead to network disruption. Hence, while it enhances business processes, it can also overwhelm networks when application performance is not closely monitored.
UC requires a significantly higher quality of service and real-time performance requirements from the underlying network, particularly when it comes to audio and video transport, than data or even voice.
This technology presents new opportunities for organizations, making it easier to stay in touch with coworkers, customers, vendors, and others. Unfortunately, this convenience and integration also present new opportunities for attackers, providing them with additional points of attack and the ability to spread those attackers further. Being a technology that spans the entire stack—from applications to network, IT heads need to be careful while thinking out their UC security. Existing security mechanisms for data networks will not suffice.
In their enthusiasm and eagerness to reap the benefits of UC, some companies are not stopping to consider the security ramifications of a UC deployment. Awareness of the threats and a plan for addressing them can make the difference between a successful transition to UC—and one that creates more problems than it solves.
