* Big Blue stresses the importance of adding effective collaboration tools to unified communication
We recently had a chance to talk with John Del Pizzo, IBM director of unified communications and collaboration about how IBM sees collaboration as an extension of unified communications. Del Pizzo heads up IBM’s Sametime product management group that has spent the last five years transitioning Sametime into a unified communications and collaboration (UCC) platform.
While he views unified communications as a part of effective collaboration efforts, he finds that collaboration tools also add other dimensions. For example, when Del Pizzo recently needed to set up his iPad on the corporate VPN, he sent a message to a community of iPad users who he had never met. Within minutes, he had responses back from others who had already gone through a similar situation with installation tips based on their experiences.
Del Pizzo also sees UCC as a way to allow UC elements like conferencing applications to provide a similar user experience regardless of the platforms used to enable the conference. As an example, he cited a recent project for Missouri Office of Homeland Security on the Missouri Emergency Resource Information System (MERIS). The MERIS solution features a variety of systems and applications from VirtualAgility, IBM, NC4 and Safeplans. Before MERIS, the agency had only the telephone, radios, paper maps and colored pushpins to keep track of things. With MERIS, they are able to see in near real time who and what resources are available at any given moment. The enhanced collaboration and communications tools have helped the state improve response time dramatically.
Paul Fennewald, coordinator of the Missouri Office of Homeland Security commented on the MERIS effectiveness following 17-day power outage that affected the state. He said, “Before MERIS, it would have taken several days to see where exactly we needed to send auxiliary generators. Now, within hours, we had a much better picture of the situation across the state. We had the generators in the right places at the right times, and homes and businesses were up on emergency power a lot sooner than they would have been otherwise.”
Our observations: The ability to extend our communications to communities of experts who can help us solve problems faster and the ability to meld communications and applications across multiple platforms is an important metric for any convergence solution. We agree with Del Pizzo on the importance of adding effective collaboration tools to unified communications, and think the ability to “unify” communications devices and applications with collaboration tools is an important consideration when considering solution providers.
Our thanks to Del Pizzo for his insights.
