Unifying Unified Communications: the next frontier

In order to make the right decisions quickly and efficiently, today's businesses must connect the right people to the right information at the right time.

But how is this possible in a world in which business processes are separate from the communications infrastructure that connects people and information?

In which separate, multiple domains exist: enterprise, carrier, wireless and wireline? And how can resellers help their customers to simplify business processes with speed, accuracy and agility while deriving more value from investments and improving overall productivity? 

To answer these questions, allow me to share with you a quick history lesson as to how we got to this point in the first place.

In the beginning, all networks were separate. Business networks comprised disparate telephony, communications, messaging and conferencing silos.

Data networks were separate entities altogether; related to the voice networks by location, not function. Information and communications were well and truly segmented.

Then came the push for integration.

With the rapid expansion of the Internet, consumers wanted the same conveniences they had at home - instant messaging and presence, which were integrated into their email and social networks and we wanted these tools and functionality in our workplace.

The challenge and opportunity for telecommunication and software vendors was to re-think their deployment strategies embracing open standards and interoperability.

As the rate of integration picked up, so did the push for standardisation. Proprietary protocols so common in the segmented networks of old were discarded for newer, industry-wide standards such as SIP (Session Initiation Protocol).

With standardisation came an explosion of choice - devices that were previously alien to each other began speaking the same language. Mobile workers armed with little more than a mobile phone could suddenly gain access to highly secure corporate networks using a secure tunnel across the public Internet.

It wasn't long before desktop software and hardware vendors realised the synergies between their products could essentially unify the last remaining 'islands' in the enterprise - the phone system and the desktop.

Unified Communications, a term coined by vendors to represent this unification of phone and desktop functionality, was the logical extension to the integrated voice and data network. No longer was communication limited to a handset - or even a softphone.

People working in office applications could literally click-to-call a contact from inside a word processor or spreadsheet, and even see at a glance if that person was available to talk, chat via IM, or receive an SMS.

 But despite all the progress we've made, there was still a major disconnect between the new world of Unified Communications, and the technology built up over decades that powers today's core businesses processes.

There are many 'examples' of this core technology: banking transaction systems, flight schedule systems, hotel booking systems, location tracking systems, RFID, CRM, ERP.

Hopefully I'm starting to paint a bigger picture here: Unified Communications is all well and good but until we can leverage the full power of the massive information silos that run the global economy, we've only scratched the surface of its potential.

So go back to the questions I posed at the start of this column. How can we, as an industry, help our customers make the right decisions quickly and efficiently in a world in which business processes are separate from the communications infrastructure that connects people and information?

The answer is surprisingly simple: using SOA (service-oriented architecture) and web services. Using software.

In a hyperconnected world every device that can be connected will be connected, and every technology from personal appliances to business systems can and will include an application with built-in communications capabilities.

Using technologies such as SOA and web services we can create and deliver such communications-enabled applications (CEA) and business processes (CEBP), which turn the challenge of hyperconnectivity into an opportunity.

SOA is a business-driven concept which is based on an architecture that uses loosely coupled services and components to support the requirements of business processes and users.

SOA is implemented through web services, a suite of extremely pervasive and widely adopted technologies.

Using SOA and web services, your customers can integrate communications functions with business applications and processes, increasing agility, accuracy, speed and overall productivity, and achieve a higher return on investment.