Users buying into idea that unified communications can cut costs, boost productivity
Vendors at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008 pushed a message that unified communications can cut operational costs and help businesses get more out of the people they have.
Both Microsoft and IBM executives highlighted cost savings and productivity enhancement during their keynotes with demonstrations of their UC products. Separately, Avaya announced 0% financing for its UC gear to enable customers “to address their business communications needs while conserving capital during these difficult times.”
They made a good pitch for savings and productivity, and potential customers attending the show, if not in desperate straits, said they see potential economic benefits of UC. (Despite official attendance figures — 4,000 preregistered — set to beat last year’s conference, crowds at the show seemed sparse.)
Most attendees interviewed at the show said they are taking extra care to choose which of their IT projects to pursue as they work under restricted budgets. For some, UC is investment they think can help boost revenue and speed up business processes.
For instance, Beckman Coulter, a $2.5 billion biomedical test gear manufacturer based in Fullerton, Calif., has imposed a travel freeze. That boosts the priority of its UC efforts, says Stephen Campbell, director of network services, because despite the freeze, the company’s distributed engineering staff still needs to consult with each other. “Better collaboration tools have been on the road map for a couple of years,” he says. “Now we’re really going to get serious about it.”
So the company has to find something besides face-to-face meetings as a substitute. “The only way to do that is with IT,” said Campbell who is building a UC infrastructure around Siemens gear. (Compare UC products.)
Others attending the show agree that UC can help cut costs. For example, Glenn Smith, CEO of systems integrator UCS Solutions in Mountain View, Calif., said he urges his small-business customers to adopt one key element of UC — VoIP — as a way to save money.
A combination of DSL lines, IP phones and a Switchvox IP PBX can cut the network cost of 24 phones from $800 to $500 per month, a savings that leads to a rapid return on investment. Plus, with employees able to turn home phones into work extensions, their productivity goes up, Smith said.
These benefits can be reaped even without pulling in other UC elements such as presence, instant messaging, collaboration software, conferencing and integration of communications with business applications.
Gil Chamaki, IT manager for processor maker Tensilica in Santa Clara, Calif., said extending UC to mobile devices would give his company’s sales force an edge. E-mail, calendaring, access to marketing data and contacts all on a standardized platform would be good for business. “With mobile clients they can get the information they need quickly to seal deals,” he said.
Chamaki was just shopping at the show, but said the benefits would also extend to other departments so workers could do more from home or during travel.
More UC uses
A Shoretel VoIP customer at the show said unlikely staff members are clamoring for UC capabilities. Tellers at Washington State Employees Credit Union who have been given instant messaging use it to discretely message bank officers to see whether to override normal bank credit rules for customers at their windows, said Tony Hildesheim, vice president of IT at the credit union.
Branch receptionists use presence and IM to find the best available employee to handle customers as they come in. The task, Hildesheim said, is integrating business applications with the communications capabilities, and that is something the applications developers at the credit union are eager to start. “We’re trying to keep the developers out of trying to write for the system until we’re done with it,” he said.
Integrating communications platforms such as PBXs with UC platforms was also a theme among vendors making announcement at the conference. Customers that have invested in VoIP gear from one vendor can’t rip it all out to blend in UC software from another, so compatibility is crucial, said Vanessa Alvarez, an analyst with Yankee Group. “Openness is table stakes. Everyone has to operate in a multivendor environment,” she said.
But not all vendors live up to that claim, said Frank Stinson, an analyst with Intellicom Analytics. “All competitors say they are open, but the reality is different.”
Among vendors making an interoperability effort was Objectworld, which announced its UC server works with Microsft Small Business Server and Essential Business Server, integrating Microsoft VoIP with legacy PBXes. Dialogic announced its media gateways work with Siemens OpenScape Voice and Enterprise Communications platforms, tying the IP gear to legacy PBXs.
Mitel announced three UC clients that work with Microsoft and IBM UC software and have programming interfaces to blend communications into corporate applications. A new mobile client supports Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry operating systems.
Avaya in collaboration with Mutare Software and SpinVox also announced new capabilities, including speech-to-text support so users can read their voice mails.
Systems integrator Spanlink announced three cookie-cutter UC packages made up of Cisco gear for small and midsize businesses that it can deploy and manage.
