Unified Communications

Enter VoIP
Through the nineties, ever more R&D went into technology that would enable voice traffic to be converted into the same bit and bytes as data, and thus travel over the same data network. Or in industry parlance, the objective was to make voice "just another application on the network." Since by that time the "language" of data networks was the so-called Internet protocol (IP), the technology became known as voice over IP, or VoIP. And when VoIP met CTI, from their union was born unified communications.

A more generic definition of CTI, taken from Wikipedia, is that of "technology that allows interactions on a telephone and a computer to be integrated or co-ordinated," a broader view of the integration process which points to what UC now promises to deliver. In other words, where CTI in the seventies and eighties held the promise of streamlining and automating processes in the telephony-environment of a call centre, UC now holds that same promise for all forms of business communications, whether in the office, in multiple offices around the globe, or, as teleworking becomes ever more common, in the comfort of our own home offices.

Once upon a time, business communications were carried out face-to-face, by letter, by phone, FAX or, if the prospective deal was large enough, by videoconference. Nowadays the media are phone (fixed or mobile), email, IM, Internet and all forms of conferencing, with blogs and chat just starting to penetrate the corporate environment. And of course, people still meet face-to-face, provided geography permits, or the prospective deal is large enough!

The compelling idea behind UC is for all forms of communication to be delivered on the same platform, enabling smooth and, potentially, seamless transitioning between one and another. An example:

UC in action
You're the sales director of a multinational company, and you're driving home when you get a call on your cellphone from René, your head of sales in Canada. You take the call on your Bluetooth headset and discuss with him a deal he's negotiating that's going to require some alterations to your product: nothing too fundamental but some design alterations for which manufacturing will need to be consulted. Of course, you'll also need to run it through the ERP system to see how the changes will impact cost, as you'll still continue producing to the original design for other customers so there will need to be changes to the assembly lines at your plant in Ireland.

You park outside your house and, as you walk in, you turn on the computer with its UC client. The call has already been rerouted to your fixed line, though you're still on the Bluetooth headset, and now you and René can also see each other in the video window on the UC client that boots as soon as the computer is switched on. The buddy list shows that Jane, who runs manufacturing in Cork, is online but on another call, so you IM her, saying you and René need to have a chat when she's available. She ends her other conversation in a couple of minutes, during which time you and René have arranged to have dinner in New York next month, then you see her presence status has changed to available, so you conference her in on the call.

The video window now splits so you can see her too, just as René is watching you and her in partitions on his screen, and the three of you discuss the deal he's bidding for. Jane pulls out some blueprints and pastes them into a common area, where René highlights the areas where the design will need to change and she makes some initial calculations of the probable cost implication.

Meantime you've emailed the financial director Scott, who's still at the office, and asked him to join the meeting. His presence status changes to online and you conference him in, Jane explains what she sees as the potential costs involved in the design changes and, even though he's now on a videocall from his laptop because he's in a cab going to dinner, he pulls up the relevant financials for you all to see from the SAP database and, there and then, starts modelling what it would do to your top and bottom lines for the next six to twelve months.

Finally you all work out what price René can offer for the redesigned product and still generate the return you need to make it worthwhile, and René drops off the call to contact the prospective customer. You suggest Jane liase with HR in Ireland as soon as René says you've got the deal to give them time to find the additional staff you'll require at the Cork plant and ask her and Scott to prepare some documentation for the next management meeting.

The example is, of course, a crude one. It could be a conversation between trading floors, with stock price info streaming across the bottom of the screen and all the comms being recorded for compliance purposes. Your PC could be a flat screen that lights up when it detects your presence in the house and you could operate the UC client entirely by voice commands. However, the principle of real-time collaboration between geographically dispersed members of a team, regardless of the device on which they're working, should be established.

Cisco's Unified Communications System
As the leading provider of networking gear and IP phones to the enterprise market, Cisco clearly intends to be a major player in UC. In March this year it renamed its portfolio in this area from IP to Unified Communications System. The System compromises several elements, essentially a collection of server software packages and a client from which users access the functions they enable.

First is the IP telephony exchange for corporate rather than carrier use, or what is commonly known as the IP PBX. In Cisco's case, this is now known as Unified CallManager. CallManager has traditionally interacted with physical IP phones and so-called "softphones", which are software clients that reside on PCs and laptops.

In the world of UC, however, softphones have expanded their remit to become the dashboard from which voice, video and data communications are driven, and to mark this expansion, the Cisco client is now called the Unified Personal Communicator. It provides an interface from which users can make voice and, with a Cisco VT camera mounted atop their monitor and another server software package called Unified Video Advantage, video calls. They can also perform call management and access phone directories, as well as initiate, take part in and manage voice, video and Web conferences via another server called Unified MeetingPlace, with rich-media functions such as whiteboarding.

Meanwhile the Unified Presence Server allows users to check the status of people they need to communicate with and act accordingly: if they are available, make a voice call, whereas if they are busy, an IM, and if offline, an email, for instance. Another server called Cisco Unity provides messaging functions, including IM and voicemail.

As for the phones in a UC network, they can be IP deskphones or the softphones within Personal Communicator. Cognizant of the increasing need for employees to be on the move both on an enterprise campus and beyond, Cisco offers its Unified MobilityManager, within which the Mobile Connect capability enables a mobile phone to be treated as an extension on the PBX. This means putting clients on the phones, and Cisco's closest partner in this area is Nokia, the market leader in cellular handsets.

On-premise or hosted, enterprise or SMB
From the outset, Cisco offered its UC portfolio as on-premise or hosted technology, aware that some companies might prefer to take it as a service and that carriers and network operators would be interested in offering such a service as a value add to basic connectivity.

That is not to say, however, that it expects only large companies to take the on-premises route. It has been launching SMB versions of the various servers, all of which have the suffix "Express" to indicate their target market, and in October it enhanced the SMB side of UC with additional features such as an Express Attendant Console and a CallControl package that enables calls to be made from within Microsoft Outlook or Internet Explorer.

Which raises an important issue for UC technology, namely that it won't be provided by any one company universally. There are a number of other IT industry heavyweights that are building up their offerings in this space just like Cisco, with Microsoft and IBM as two leading contenders. What these two companies have in common is their market clout in corporate email, Exchange and Domino jointly representing 80%-90% of systems installed worldwide.

As the dominant mode of non-real-time enterprise communications, email is clearly as logical place to start in building a business in UC as the IP PBX, and both companies seek to leverage their strength in the email market to do so. Add to that Microsoft's dominant position in office productivity software and it becomes clear why that company's bid to become a heavy hitter in UC must be taken seriously.

In recognition of this situation, Cisco has made its UC server infrastructure capable of interacting with the Microsoft client, called Office Communicator, as well as with its own. It has enabled integration of CallManager with Microsoft Outlook address books for simplified dialling, while MeetingPlace can integrate with Outlook and Lotus Notes calendars for setting up conferences.

The ability, delivered in October with CallControl, to make calls directly from Outlook, or from within the IE browser (such as when a website provides a contact phone number) is a further example of Cisco recognising the need to work with other vendors to build a UC infrastructure. One would expect integration with other enterprise applications such as ERP and CRM systems in future iterations of the technology, enabling SAP Financials or the Siebel database to be invoked during a Web conference, for instance.

The need for open standards
The example given above of UC in operation was an entirely intra-company one, and the early stages of the technology's development will almost certainly be confined to the boundaries of the company implementing it. That stage per se holds the promise of productivity gains thanks to real-time collaboration between co-workers, regardless of their physical location.

However, the realities of modern corporate structures are such that increasing numbers of employees are required to collaborate with people in other companies too, as certain functions are outsourced to third-party providers. At the moment, IP voice calls going outside a company must traverse a gateway to get onto the regular circuit-switched phone network, but as IP telephony becomes more pervasive, the potential for intercompany UC will grow.

While big multinationals will be able to impose their technology platform choices on partner companies, just as Wal-Mart is doing with RFID technology, there will be many cases in which companies will need to collaborate without necessarily running the same UC infrastructures.

CBR Opinion
Open standards will become increasingly important, and in this context, Cisco's decision, when it unveiled the UC portfolio earlier this year, to announce support for the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) VoIP standard was an important one. Beyond the Cisco or Microsoft clients supported today, this lays the ground for working with potentially any SIP-based UC client, just as you can call someone in China and know that they'll be able to receive my call, regardless of who made the handset at the other end.