Breaking down the UC barriers
Kevin Kevany goes in search of the true meaning of unified communications to small and medium businesses and discovers significant productivity and efficiency benefits.
| In years to come unified communications, or UC to those jargon-loving backroom lads and lasses who eat, sleep and dream about it every waking moment, will probably be credited with providing the greatest leap forward in productivity ever – especially in the services sector, where so much of the modern economy’s well-being rests. Why in years to come, and not immediately then, if it is such a game-changer? One, it would seem, because of its rather bland name. Two, since blandness implies a lack of definition (and with it suspicion). And three, because of the first two; most vendors have chased the corporate market – with its own fondness for jargon, vagueness and sacks of gold (which don’t go into lock-down when the salesman’s calculator crosses the $100K mark). UC is fundamentally about efficiency gains; optimising business processes; focusing work-flows to meet customer needs; true collaboration, wherever you are; and enhanced communication, irrespective of the physical devices or the media being used at the time. Lags in response are eliminated or at least reduced by a flashing red bar across your screen if you haven’t responded to a call or left for your meeting. UC is the super-secretary that used to run organisations, returned in software form. And no, this one won’t make tea either. Could it be that many UC vendors have failed to appreciate that, with few exceptions, the tight hierarchical structures which cascaded down from the corporate kings, pre-September 2007, don’t hold sway anymore, and most large organisations today are increasingly turning into clusters of SMEs (small and medium enterprises) – each like us. So when are they likely to catch-on and start beating down our doors? Well, one in particular has started. And it’s probably the least likely one you might have guessed: Granny Telecom and its whizz-bang techno subsidiary Gen-i. It is using the sales opportunities, productivity efficiencies, image enhancement and communication and collaboration enveloping capabilities of UC to reinvent itself simultaneously, both in the marketplace and its own organisation. The one-time government department is coming to the people – SMEs – via ‘Telecom Business Hubs’ and asking how they can help us operate more efficiently, at the lowest possible cost – and actually coming back with solutions. The strategy is for each hub to be headed up by a former, successful SME operator – not a geeky ‘techno-spouting’ type – used to the pressures and pains of running a small enterprise. This hasn’t actually been announced with a Scottish brogue yet and, as of Easter, only two hubs have been rolled out – in Whangarei and West Auckland. But already the signs are good and multiples more will flow around the country as Telecom looks to capitalise on the fact that virtually every SME still has a copper telephone wire running into it – whether in the CBD or at home or on the farm – and more than a million customers used to paying a monthly bill to them. The UC concept Let’s look more closely at what UC is and where a range of vendors are driving it – and look at a case study which illustrates both the actual and the potential behind the vanilla moniker. I spent just 20-minutes with Zeacom channel manager Tony Wilcock, and became an instant believer in its capacity to transform commerce. In essence, the concept of UC is so simple; you suspect the IT industry has yet again complicated it. Until now, the focus on UC has been very much on the broad range of devices, from landlines to mobile phones and faxes, and onto IP telephony and Voice over IP (VoIP) – all of which channel the different communications which flow in and out of a business – voice, video and data – the technology set, if you like; to your desk. I found it easier to think of it as integrated or collaborative communications, with all of the mixing and assimilation implied. But unified it is and UC it will stay. At its best it is about transferring information ‘seamlessly’ (you just have to use that word to describe what’s happening) from whatever communication device or type you are using to the most appropriate device and mode of communication the person you want to receive (at that instant in time) is using – and has indicated they want you to reach them on. It goes without saying that you will be in another place in the city, the country or abroad – with the barrier that used to represent, simply taken out of the equation. If the only means of communication out of Timbuktu is a fax machine, that can be used to send a “Help. Get me outa here!” note, which will be morphed into a voice message on your boss’s iPhone as he relaxes down in the Viaduct. Productivity and efficiency Sit with Myra Cohen, Zeacom’s marketing communications manager, in her Newmarket office, and she can, at a glance at her computer screen, show you who is on outgoing calls in their US west coast office, or who is in a meeting (and with whom) in their US east coast operation. That means she can make a judgement call on whether to have someone interrupt them and get them to take a call which will answer an important technical question one of her customers has in Oamaru. Prior to that she would have noted who the Zeacom subject experts are around the world and their availability to help out. On the more Machiavellian front, be warned, the boss no longer needs to creep along the corridors and ask your colleague what you’ve been doing all morning: he knows how many times you’ve moved your mouse, left your desk or phoned a non-client number. That could be described as a ‘productivity and efficiency gain’ or snooping, depending on where you rate in the organisation. The organisation, of course, could be a local plumbing company, with five or six plumbers, each in vans around the city. Tailored software enables each plumber to indicate a complication which will delay his reaching the next appointment. A co-ordinator back at the office can then check for a suitable deputy from those who are ahead of schedule and know the particular problem, and reschedule. Receptive market So is Telecom barking up the wrong tree, or just barking, as it looks to SMEs as an opportunity to maintain its massive presence in the local market? After all, as a sector, we’ve been slow on the uptake. Or have we? “Telarus has found the New Zealand market particularly receptive to our UC offering in the 18 months we have been established here, especially SMEs with existing links to Australia or about to export to that country,” says Jules Rumsey, CEO of Telarus. The company signalled its local expansion by signing a wholesale agreement with Telecom New Zealand that has enabled it to “productise offerings based on a range of services in New Zealand, including fixed line voice, ADSL, SHDSL and Ethernet services”. It has also partnered with Citylink to “provide us with aggressively priced Ethernet services in a number of CBD/Metro areas, as well as the option of dark fibre if this is required”. |
Telarus operates its own trans-Tasman MPLS network, with full national coverage, in both Australia and New Zealand. [See case study]
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