A reader to my column, in response to my newsletter on Microsoft’s recent unified communications announcements, wrote “Expertise is a biggie: the network folks don't know telephony *applications* and the telecom folks don't know Windows networks well enough.”

The reader raises a good point. In many organizations, messaging and telecom are distinct groups that manage separate systems. The expertise involved in managing these separate systems simply doesn’t flow freely back and forth between the groups, nor does it have to in a traditional environment. E-mail servers can be managed separately from the PBX and other components of the telephony infrastructure and, typically, this works very well.

An even bigger issue for those considering a migration to unified communications, however, is the potential political difficulty that many organizations will face. In a study on unified communications that we conducted earlier this year, we found that 45% of organizations reported that they anticipated some level of political difficulty if they migrated to unified communications, while another 7% expected ‘lots of difficulty.’ For example, in a unified communications environment, do those who manage e-mail servers now manage telephony? Do the telecom people now manage the e-mail servers? Do the groups get merged into one?

This is one of the key issues that will have to be resolved in midsized and large organizations that operate separate messaging and telecom groups. It could be a showstopper in some organizations if they are not prepared for the potential difficulties that could arise from competing groups fighting for control of the new communications infrastructure.

I’d like to know what you think about this – please e-mail me your thoughts.

Editor's note: Starting Tuesday, Nov, 13, the Unified Communications newsletter will be merged with the Antispam News Alert and will be named the "Unified Communications Alert." Subscribers to the HTML version of this newsletter will notice some enhancements that will provide you with access to more resources relevant to unified communications. You will still receive Michael Osterman's analysis of this market, which you will be able to read in its entirety online at NetworkWorld.com, along with links to relevant news headlines of the day. We hope you enjoy the enhancements and we thank you for reading Network World newsletters.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.