UC
Salesforce.com’s introduction of its “Chatter” social networking service for business customers is yet another reminder that what we have traditionally thought of as communications is changing as social computing applications enter the enterprise market. Chatter provides a Facebook-like service for internal community building and collaboration; meaning that workers have a new platform for sharing information and communicating both in real-time and in non-real-time. What does the emergence of enterprise social computing mean for those planning for UC? A new communication channel, and another point of integration! The real value of UC is in tying together disparate forms of communication such as voice, video, instant messaging, and conferencing. Now along comes another set of conversation channels including microblogging, wikis, blogs, and shared workspaces. The key to success for a converged collaboration and UC strategy is enabling integration between all channels. For example, those working in a shared workspace, social computing portal, or wiki should be able to see presence status of other workgroup members and easily initiate a chat, call, or group conference. Instant messaging and mail applications should be able to provide feeds for microblogging or RSS-based services.
