Last week I talked about the key components of unified communication. As noted, UC isn’t just “unified messaging.” Nemertes views UC as comprising VoIP, conferencing (audio, video, and web), unified messaging, contact center applications, presence, and fixed/mobile convergence. Often, these are combined in a single user interface we call the “real-time communications dashboard” (RTCD).
Of these, one of the least-understood components is presence. In the past, there’s been a lot of confusion about what’s meant by “presence” — many folks mistakenly equate it with instant messaging. That’s changing, though: In Nemertes’ most recent round of research, virtually all IT executives defined presence (correctly) as the sharing of availability information between applications such that employees can easily can see if someone is on the phone, or in a video call, Web conferencing or meeting.
Why is this valuable? The biggest reason is that it wrings out latency from business processes. In many organizations, having readily-available presence information dramatically cuts down on the amount of wasted communications — no more voice-mail tag, for example (and in fact, very little voice mail at all).
Getting rid of this person-to-person delay makes organizations more agile and responsive — things that are top-priority business goals, even in this downturn.
How can organizations implement presence? Many times it’s available via e-mail applications such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Outlook. In these systems, presence status could be as simple as an icon that glows green when someone is available, yellow when busy, and red when unavailable. In addition to the in-box, presence applications are likely to take the form of a desktop (or mobile) buddy list.
Finally, there’s what we call the real-time communications dashboard, a user interface that aggregates presence, messaging and a variety of back-end applications. There are clients available that integrate instant messaging with presence aggregation from a variety of back-end applications.
Speaking of RTCDs, we’ve seen that adoption has grown considerably. In 2007, only 14% of the IT executives we work with had deployed them, with another 33% planning on a deployment in the next three years. Now, with RTCDs becoming a key component of UC architectures, adoption is rapidly growing. Forty-nine percent of IT execs are either using or planning to use, while another 21% are evaluating RTCDs for future deployment. Just 30% have no plans to deploy, down from 54% in 2007.
It’s worth noting, though, that despite the growing popularity of RTCDs, deployment may be delayed for financial reasons (as I noted in my previous column). Quite simply, although the value of enterprise agility may be obvious, in an economic environment that requires hard-dollar ROI before a project can go forward, many IT organizations are slowing deployment of projects like RTCDs.
That said, those folks rolling out VoIP solutions are getting RTCD licenses as part of the VoIP license. So in a sense, RTCDs are bringing presence in through the back door: they’re rapidly replacing single-function softphones and instant-message screens.
The bottom line? IT managers should give careful consideration to the role of RTCDs as they develop their UC plans. Look for applications that can easily integrate into your existing applications while providing extensibility to enable you to customize dashboards to meet your specific needs.
