Unified communications still a mystery, says study

Unified communications might be a fashionable term, but many organizations still struggle to understand the benefits of a connected, IP-based communications infrastructure, a Butler Group study has reported.

Researchers found that many organizations think of unified communications mainly as a way to cut costs, when the real advantages are all about improving the way the business operates.

Many communications overhauls are designed mainly to consolidate infrastructure, reduce operational costs and improve levels of service quality, said Mark Blowers, Butler Group's enterprise architectures practice director, but these notions miss the point.

"Although these are useful goals, the real value afforded by unified communications and collaboration solutions ultimately arises from improvements to business processes, enhancement of stakeholder interactions, the optimization of workflow, and driving innovation in the business," Blowers said in the study.

The study, "Unified Communications and Collaboration Report: Laying the Foundations for Business Process Flexibility and Innovation," was released on Tuesday, and examines unified communications from the point of view of CIOs and IT managers.

The research found that a sea-change is taking place in business, and that hierarchically organized communications infrastructures are no longer able to cope with organizations' needs.

Enterprises now require a common IP-based infrastructure to allow information to be more mobile and to deal with requirements such as staff location independence, Butler Group said.

The move to IP-based infrastructure also allows for badly-needed technical innovation, said Blowers.

"Moving away from proprietary solutions for voice and data to a horizontal communications architecture will enable the communications environment to be broken down into separate layers, making use of industry standards to integrate the hardware, common services, and administration elements," he said in the report.

"This compensation and services-based approach increases flexibility, enabling services to be developed independent of the equipment."