Unified communications products are finding a place in businesses that need to maintain an 'always on' communications presence.
By Sarah Stokely
Internet-based communications have come a long way since they started as simple data services such as web surfing and email. Now the same underlying network that delivers your email can also let you make phone calls or even host video conferences. While VoIP (voice over internet protocol) has been around for some years, newer convergence technology is helping businesses run a range of services across their internet infrastructure from voice calls to video conferencing and instant messaging.
One aspect that companies should be aware of is that if a network goes down due to a hardware fault then phones will go down as well. James Cottrill FCPA, who heads up IT audit and consulting at Stanton Partners, warns: 'It is extremely important to build in high levels of redundancy in your network if using VoIP.'
That said, around 40 per cent of Australian organisations have started using IP telephony, according to a 2007 survey of IT managers and end-user customers across the US, Asia-Pacific and EMEA regions. The survey, commissioned by global IT services firm Dimension Data, found that organisations view click-to-dial on desktops, and 'presence' a type of network awareness as technologies that will be routinely used in the corporate environment within two years.
While the US leads the way in IP telephony adoption (60 per cent), in terms of organisations currently using a video conferencing infrastructure, Australia ranked second (45 per cent).
Dave D'Aprano, national solutions and services director, Dimension Data, says: 'The research indicates that unified communications and the associated technologies are more widely adopted than anticipated. The move to work-from-home or flexi-working initiatives around the world has also impacted the increase in adoption.'
Businesses are looking to this convergence of high-speed internet, voice calls and video also known as triple-play services to help them provide 'always on' communications for their customers and staff, and potentially to add new services for their customers.
Victorian health services provider Eastern Health has been using VoIP and video conferencing since completing a major IT investment project in 2007. These are used to connect the 7000 staff spread across multiple sites, including three hospitals, as well as for diagnostic work.
'We're using video conferencing extensively intercampus and into the other networks within [hospital network] shared services,' says Eastern Health chief technical officer Mark Gardiner.
Prominent telecommunications industry analyst Paul Budde estimates that Australia will have over one million paid VoIP subscribers by 2010, and he predicts that it is broadband-based triple-play business models which will spur its growth, rather than stand alone VoIP products.
The next step from connecting your data network (internet) to your telephone network (VoIP) has been to allow these two forms of communication to also talk to your desktop computer. This means linking your communications, such as internet and telephone, to the things you do at the computer desktop. In practical terms what this means is all the contacts you keep in your computer (for example, email addresses or customer contacts in your CRM database) are accessible by your communications network.
This means you can start a phone call (or send an instant message, or start a video conference) by clicking on a name in your email or your CRM software. By looking at your company's staff contact list in Outlook you can see who is available to take your call, even a co-worker at a different site. This network awareness is called 'presence', and many IT companies tout this as the beginning of the end of voicemail.
As a major player in the IT industry, Microsoft has thrown its weight behind this technology, which it calls 'unified communications'. Speaking at the launch of its new unified communications suite in October, Oscar Trimboli, director of unified communications at Microsoft Australia said: 'We believe that unified communications software will transform business communications as fundamentally as email did in the 1990s.'
Microsoft wants to link its dominant Microsoft Office and Microsoft Outlook programs into the new voice and data communications platforms. And it is well placed to do this, because its products are already present in so many corporate environments both at the back end (Microsoft Exchange) and desktop (the Microsoft Office suite and Outlook email).
It's counting on the appeal of being able to link up your existing Microsoft applications with the new convergence technology. Stephen Edwards is head of the Convergence Solutions Business for Orange Business Services (part of global communications services provider France Telecom). He says Microsoft has got businesses thinking about how they can simplify and extend their existing Microsoft environment in the workplace into 'a single interface and intercommunications platform'.
Microsoft has 'stopped people in their tracks' who were going down the voice / data convergence path, but are now wondering whether they need to include desktop integration as part of their plan, he says. Unified communications could appeal to businesses as a way to integrate even remote workers into the organisations 'virtually' a boon to companies with multiple offices, or mobile workers, he says.
BHP Billiton was among the Microsoft customers to trial Microsoft's new UC suite ahead of the launch in October. The firm trialled Office Communications Server 2007 (formerly Live Communications Server) which delivers VoIP, video, instant messaging, conferencing and presence within familiar Microsoft applications such as Microsoft Office as well as Microsoft's new Dynamics EPR and CRM products.
The trial helped them understand the value of presence, says Ian Hoyle, principal architect, technology enterprise IT strategy group at BHP Billiton. 'With distributed groups, it is important to know where people are and when they are available. This helps open communication, saves time, and improves decision making.'
Another early adopter of VoIP and unified communications technology is financial services company Austock Group. Over the course of 2007 Austock began to roll out VoIP for its 200 workers in offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. It elected to move to a combined Nortel / Microsoft system. This includes Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS) and Office Communicator software, which will allow the company to introduce unified communications across the desktop, including instant messaging and video.
Chief information officer Ryan Bessemer says the need for fast communication and response times prompted the company's move to IP telephony. 'We run a time critical business, especially in our stockbroking operation, so when a customer calls us to action a stock purchase or sell-off, every second missed can have a significant impact on the deal,' says Bessemer.
Using UCS to see the presence of staff, calls could be routed to someone who is available to take the call immediately. 'Using the handset you can program it to dial a group so you can call all five operators and route the call to the one who picks up first.'
Bessemer says the learning curve hasn't been too much of a barrier. 'The handset is just like any handset, it just has more features. And everyone knows the Microsoft interface and how to use it. It's much easier from the point of view of staff.' Bessemer says the move to converged networking means opportunities for new business as well.
'Telephony is going to be a very big part of our offering to retail customers,' he explains. 'We're looking at internet and phone services such as accessing account balances and being able to easily contact their advisers.'
But apart from speeding up phone response times, he says that VoIP and LCS (Live Communications Server) have a lot of other benefits to the business, especially when working between offices and time zones.
One major change in Microsoft's UC offering is the update to video conferencing offered by RoundTable, which was released in 2006. This is a $3000 video conferencing phone with a camera which captures a 360 degree panoramic view of meeting participants. It tracks the speaker and can record meetings.
This is the first time Microsoft has extended Communication Server beyond one-on-one video conferencing to become a full video conferencing solution. The ability to have a full point-to-point video conferencing solution for $6000 represents a huge drop in the barrier to entry.
'For video conferencing between offices, it used to be tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars to set up,' explains Bessemer.
Unified communications products are finding a place in businesses that have a need to maintain an 'always on' communications presence to the world, particularly large corporates that work across multiple sites and time zones.
Bessemer says the technology also has benefits for employees. Staff working from home or on the road can easily access and communicate with the office through their laptops. In one case he says that it's helped him keep a valued employee who didn't want to come back to work full time after maternity leave. She now works two days a week in the office, and one day from home. 'I've set her up at home like she's at work. I can even see her face to face on video,' says Bessemer.
But if not harnessed correctly, the 'always on' workplace that this technology enables will become a huge problem for workers, warns Fast Company blogger Cali Williams Yost: 'Too many people are working their traditional 8.00 am 6.00 pm schedule in addition to doing global work after hours.' As with any business problem, the solution to this is not technology, but good management. 'Always on' communication technology can be a powerful tool to businesses, ensuring that the flexibility it provides serves to help work / life balance, rather than destroying it.
Reference: February 2008, volume 78:01, p. 50 53
