No. 1 / January 2013 Distributed within The Guardian

Get connected Find out how you can benefi t

One channel of communication What does it mean for your business?

AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT DISTRIBUTED WITHIN THE GUARDIAN ON BEHALF OF MEDIAPLANET WHO TAKES SOLE RESPONSIBILITY FOR ITS CONTENT

A vision of the future: The technology creating exciting new opportunities

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

PHOTO: VIRGIN MEDIA BUSINESS

3STEPS

UNDERSTAND THE POSSIBILITIES

2 · JANUARY 2013 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

How is your business communicating?

Communication technology in business is great but too many companies are still handling it clumsily, says Guy Clapperton, Editor, Unifi ed Communications Expo.

Aphone call is han-dled diff erently to an email, which comes through on a diff erent sys-tem from an In-stant Message. It’s

a little like reading a sports news-paper followed by a news magazine, and getting TV listings separately; it would be neater and easier to get them all in the same place.

One channel of communication

There’s actually no need for business communications to

work in this cumbersome way. The most basic smartphones nowadays will handle multiple email accounts, IM and elements of video conferenc-ing; you can combine mobile and soft phones in a single handset. Couple this with the move towards using a phone as the main point of internet access (they have already replaced the

PC in India and other territories as the main means of going online) and you have a compelling reason to con-sider uniting all of your communica-tions through one channel.

Finding solutionsClearly, there are practical is-sues. Corporate implementa-

tions can be highly complex so loads need to be balanced and equipment compatibilities checked and certifi ed. This is what unifi ed communications off ers.

More particularly, whether the installation is large or small, the connection to the network has to be robust and fast. The emergence of

4G services in the UK and elsewhere helps both elements of this, off er-ing a broadband experience both in and out of the offi ce. This is essen-tial if you want video communica-tions without delays, shared white-boards and other documents on any platform whatsoever.

The futureThe extra bandwidth will en-courage an explosion in cor-

porate apps for mobile platforms. Virtualised systems and cloud ap-plications and data will be availa-ble instantaneously, lessening the need for a lot of local storage. Sup-port requirements will change as users appreciate increasing amounts of possibilities.

It begins with rationalising and using some common sense about how communications are delivered.

Guy ClappertonEditor, Unifi ed Communications Expo

‘Understand the implications of the changes that are about to happen — and what it means for your business’

Antony Walker, Deputy Director General, Intellect UK

PAGE 6

UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS, 1ST EDITION, JANUARY 2013

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CHALLENGES

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Implemented correctly and adopt-ed fully, UC brings significant busi-ness benefits. In material terms, our customers see cost savings come from lower IT management and administration costs, less trav-el, inclusive call charges and above all increases in productivity. But the reality can bring a number of practical problems that still create a substantial barrier to adoption for business and IT department alike.

Adoption challenges The replacement of the central teleph-ony system (PBX) remains one of the key compelling events for full adop-tion of unified communications. How-ever, the expense of replacing a PBX means that the CIO is likely to wait un-til the PBX reaches the end of its life, in spite of the difficulty of integration with UC tools this creates. Secondly few providers have been able to offer a full suite of really good collaboration tools, resulting in complex IT deploy-ment projects and a poor user experi-ence. Just because an icon appears on an employee’s desktop, it doesn’t guar-antee they will use that service, or ben-efit from it. In short, UC has not been easy to use, the business has not been able to see the benefit and email has prevailed as the preferred communi-cation tool in spite of the fact that it has started to dominate the working day, inhibiting productivity.

Renewed appetite for UCNow, however, that is chang-ing. Forrester1 recently reported

that while only a third of global businesses currently use UC, that number is set to rise. Forrest-er predicts that another third of global businesses plan to imple-ment UC soon and at Colt, we’re certainly seeing much more cus-tomer interest.

What’s driving this adoption? As well as the rampant prolifer-ation of email; we see consum-erisation of IT, continued focus on cost savings and the increas-ing priority for mobile and flexi-ble working solutions as contrib-uting factors. Lines of business managers can see that with the right UC solution there is scope to cut overheads, reduce of-fice space and improve custom-er service. Employees now want to communicate with the same types of social and collaborative tools that they use in their free time and use them in a seam-less way. People expect to move through email to IM to video-conferencing and do so through

a familiar interface on multiple devices from any location and that’s now a possibility.

At Colt we are now able to of-fer our 5,000 employees the abil-ity to move between voice, mes-senger, video conferencing and email with little interruption. Few vendors could offer this five years ago, let alone service pro-viders being able to demonstrate successful integration. The ex-perience of implementing UC for Colt, combined with the ser-vices we have developed in con-junction with our customers, means that we are now able to in-tegrate a comprehensive unified communications suite with our extensive network and offer a

single SLA for service manage-ment across Europe.

Proving the business caseBut UC solutions remain com-plex. It’s no small ask to deploy a range of complex communi-cations into one manageable secure service. UC application suites hosted on premise still come with a sizable capital in-vestment and on-going manage-ment as the applications, soft-ware and hardware involved re-quire a wide range of technical expertise. In the past, this made a business case hard to prove. In-creasingly we are finding cus-tomers turning to UC applica-tions hosted in a private cloud and delivered to the business as a service with per-user pric-ing, thus removing the need for capex and allowing the CIO to fo-cus on supporting the business rather than the IT infrastructure.

For our customers today, the solution is more mature and the business benefits make the eco-nomic argument stand up at last. Gartner’s recent “Hunting and Harvesting in a Digital World: The 2013 CIO Agenda”2 argues that business executives expect the CIO to raise business perfor-mance through IT transforma-tion. UC finally looks like a good place to start.

1 FORRESTER RESEARCH, INC., UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS

AND COLLABORATION IS POISED FOR GROWTH AS

DEMAND RISES, NOVEMBER 20122 GARTNER, HUNTING AND HARVESTING IN A DIGITAL

WORLD: THE 2013 CIO AGENDA, ANALYST(S): MARK P.

MCDONALD | DAVE ARON , 1 JANUARY 2013

■ www.colt.net

Does the business case for unified communications finally stack up?

Hugo Harber Portfolio Director, Colt Technology Services

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

■ It’s been a slow burn for Unified Communications. Although the term was first coined some 20 years ago to describe the bringing together of voice and video, messaging and collaboration tools, take-up of fully integrated suites of communication and collaborative tools has been limited.

‘Implemented correctly, UC brings significant business benefits’

4 · JANUARY 2013 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

The defi nition of unifi ed communi-cations, says Mark Heraghty, Man-aging Director of Virgin Media Busi-ness, depends on whether you’re a user or a vendor. Vendors sell plat-forms that unify every application; whereas an individual might view their smartphone as a UC tool (even though the text, email and video apps don’t ‘talk’ to each other).

“People are using all sorts of de-vices in their work, rest and play,” says Heraghty. “And that’s what uni-fi ed communications is about. It’s the ubiquitous, pervasive commu-nication capability to do whatever

they want to do, no matter where there are.” As a result, the o� ce isn’t a place anymore. It’s a state of mind.

Another bonus is that UC facili-tates easier collaboration between colleagues working in di� erent lo-cations. “Although you do need an-other fundamental capability before you do that productively — and that’s cloud computing,” says Heraghty. “You need a secure hosted environ-ment that allows multiple people to work on the same software package.”

The benefits of videoIn business, video calling is an area where cultural barriers are still con-siderable, says Dr Carsten Sørensen from The London School of Econom-ics and Political Science. “I Skype all the time,” he says, “but I rarely use its video function. Because the most important thing to everyone on the planet is how other people see us.”

Heraghty agrees. “In some ways, teleconferencing suites are better

than a physical meeting because they give you everything you need in a more ordered environment. At the other end of the spectrum, peo-ple are using their iPhones and iPads to video call — although I think most are still more comfortable on a voice call than a video call… but that’s changing. And video can be a much richer experience.”

So where will UC take us in the fu-ture? “As an industry, we need to con-tinue investing in the underlying in-frastructure of wired and wireless ca-pabilities,” says Heraghty. “Because if that doesn’t happen, everything else is just fantasy. But the area around machine-to-machine communica-tion is going to change. The vision of the future is a presumption that pretty much everything we have will be connected. The application of this technology will be very exciting.”

■ Question: Is unifi ed communications being adopted by more and more businesses?

■ Answer: It depends on your defi nition of it, but its effects are already being seen — and its future possibilities are exciting.

TONY GREENWAY

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

SHOWCASE

The offi ce is a state of mind

BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIESUnified communications is facilitating easier collaboration between colleagues in different locationsPHOTO: VIRGIN MEDIA BUSINESS

INSPIRATION

■ Has ActionAid adopted unified communications?

! From our perspective, we employ three tranches of

what I would call UC: software that integrates with our desk phones and PBX system; a con-ference bridge that is used as a cost-reduction solution and a tel-eworker server that allows free calls right across ActionAid over the internet from handsets.

■ Has it been cost effective?

! We invested £4,500 in the conference bridge and saw

our ROI in months. Prior to this, a typical conference call led from China with four partici-pants — based in China, Nepal, India and Afghanistan — would have been £474. Using the con-ference bridge, the cost is £67.

■ Has it made staff more productive?

! That’s difficult to meas-ure, but it’s now certainly

much easier to set up a confer-ence call. We don’t have to use a commercial agency and eve-ryone has access to a web-based view.

■ Are internet calls used widely?

! Yes. In one month there were 12,000 calls. It’s not

just that they’re free. There’s an online phone directory, up to eight people can join a con-ference call, it has all the fea-tures of voicemail and there’s no drop in quality.

Mark Patterson Head of ICT, ActionAid UK

QUESTION & ANSWER

COMMUNICATEIN A DIFFERENT

WAY

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UNIFIED COMMUNICATION SOLUTIONS TAILOREDFOR YOUR BUSINESSwww.timico.co.uk/uc

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Video conferencing goes mobile

VIDEO MOBILISATIONMichael Bayer argues that video mobilisation is making the working environment more collaborative and more inclusivePHOTO: AVAYA

The next 12-18 months is going to be an exciting time for the video market, says Michael Bayer, President EMEA of Avaya, the global business collabora-tion and communications company.

As little as two years ago, video hadn’t quite made it onto the ros-ter of ‘must-have’ communications tools amongst many corporates — but this is fast-changing.

In fact, the activity Avaya has seen since its acquisition of unified visual communications company Radvision in June 2012 has been tremendous. In as little as six months there has been a noticeable shift in customer percep-tion around the video market.

“The consumerisation of vid-eo has been key to this,” says Bay-er. “People were using Skype, Face-time, and messaging in their private

lives… but then entering corpo-rate world and not being able to get the same kind of user-experience. So, recently, there has been more pressure from the user-side for video in the workplace to become more ‘consumerised’.

“Plus, Session Interaction Proto-col (SIP) is now an open standard, and companies such as Avaya have pioneered it. This is a paradigm shift, because SIP allows the user to invite whoever they want into any confer-ence, on whatever media and what-ever devices the different parties are using. It makes the process of com-municating far more efficient, cost-effective and simple to use. Plus, ap-plications — which work on any operating system — allow full col-laboration of data, voice… and video.” Today’s technology, then, enables truly “unified” communication.

AccessibleAvaya’s approach is also democ-ratising the use of video, as it means that enterprise-class video

is now accessible to all staff within any size of organisation, whether large multinational or small start-up. According to a report by IDC, 30 per cent of office workers are con-sidered ‘collaboration workers’, re-veals Bayer. “Seven per cent of those have access to ‘room-based video systems’ — or large video suites,” he says. “But what about the other 23 per cent who don’t have access to that room? Well, for them, Avaya have created solutions which allow the mobilisation of video.

“The beauty of today’s technol-ogy is that it allows any company to connect already-deployed video rooms to other devices. Our video solutions are available on desktop, laptop, smartphone and tablets — and, crucially, users on lower band-widths can be ‘conferenced’ into a telepresence room without dilut-ing video quality.”

MobilisationPreviously, users needed a manual to work video conferencing technology and someone standing by on the IT side. “Today,” says Bayer, “you set up a video call as if you were dialling an audio call. You press the video calling icon. That’s all you do.”

Companies have to ensure that they have the right communications

infrastructure in place to manage these multiple devices and chan-nels effectively, while still maintain-ing the IT stability, flexibility and security required to run their busi-ness. “For example, Avaya has soft-ware applications for several differ-ent mobile operating systems,” says Bayer. “Users have their private da-ta on their phones; but the moment they want to take or make a compa-ny call, they click on an application and all communications — voice, video, etc — are channelled through it and are company compliant (and cost effective).” To keep ahead of the video curve, says Bayer, compa-nies must constantly be aware of the bandwidth and performance of the IT networks they are providing to their employees.

The ease and flexibility of vid-eo mobilisation is going to make a big impact on corporates — and not least on company travel costs. “Face-to-face meetings won’t stop, of course,” says Bayer. “But mobi-lisation of video could drive costs down and give a company the abil-ity to include people into video con-ferences who might not necessarily have been in the party travelling to a meeting. Video mobilisation makes the working environment more col-laborative and more inclusive.”

Michael BayerPresident EMEA, Avaya

COMMERCIAL FEATURE

■ Video no longer involves a high-end set up with a guy from IT on stand-by in case things go wrong. Rather, video today is just a communications tool that every employee can use – on any device, no matter the size of the company — says Michael Bayer from Avaya, a leading global provider of business collaboration and communications solutions.

www.avaya.com/video ■ Follow @Power Collab on Twitter for all latest trends and tips on Collaboration

■ Participate in our Collaboration Survey and win an iPad Mini: Avaya.com/CollabSurvey ■ Visit Avaya at UC Expo (5-6 March), stand F605, Olympia - London

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A hi-tech revolution across the spectrum

A NEW SPECTRUMThe switch-off of anologue TV freed up a new radio spectrum, allowing the next generation of 4G mobile servicesPHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

A unifi ed communications rev-olution is coming, says Antony Walker, Deputy Director General of Intellect UK, the organisation representing the technology in-dustry, and it’s all down to new ra-dio spectrum.

“These are airwaves used to trans-mit all radio communications,” says Walker. “Diff erent services use dif-ferent frequencies so that they don’t interfere with each other, which means that, for example, mobile phones and WiFi don’t interfere with TV broadcasts or, indeed, mis-sile defence systems. Spectrum is a carefully managed, heavily used — and fi nite — resource.”

A new spectrumThis month, Ofcom, who manage its use, began an auction to roll out new spectrum, which is available, in part, because of the switch-off of analogue TV. This will allow the next generation of 4G mobile

services and have profound impli-cations for businesses. “Its arrival will be as big as when broadband services and mobile phones went mass market,” says Walker. “Plus, low-cost sensors combined with wireless transmitters will be in-creasingly available and this will enable ‘the internet of things’ or machine-to-machine communi-cation. Ubiquitous connectivity

will cause the next big ‘disrup-tion’. And it will happen quickly.”

In the automotive sector, for ex-ample, sensors can be integrated into cars to allow information to be sent back to insurance fi rms about the way a person drives, or generate data if they have an accident. “And that will transform the car insur-ance business,” says Walker. “But that’s just one example because these sensors can be applied in any industry. It’s going to open up lots of new opportunities for businesses.” In healthcare, sensors could help monitor patient care at home and patient fl ow in the NHS — while di-rect payments from mobile phones will transform the payment and re-tail industries.

Going forward, businesses will have access to faster networks and increased capacity. “More connec-tivity can be harnessed for bigger tasks,” says Walker. “And that, too, will provide signifi cant opportuni-ties for collaboration, innovation and challenge existing business models. The message is: understand the implications of the chang-es that are about to happen — and what it means for your business.”

TONY GREENWAY

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

■ A study on behalf of the

Department of Media, Communication and Sport found

that spectrum is worth £52bn a year to the UK economy.

■ New spectrum will boost the

amount of airwaves available to

mobile phones by more than 75 per cent. (Ofcom)

■ For a typical user, download

speeds of initial 4G networks will be

at least 5-7 times those for existing 3G networks. (Ofcom)

FACTS

Antony Walker Deputy Director General, Intellect UK

NEWS

ANALYSE WHETHER YOUR

COMMUNICATIONS ARE OUTDATED

2STEP

■ Question: What is radio spectrum?

■ Answer: Airwaves that are used to transmit all radio communications — and availability of new spectrum is set to herald a revolution in unifi ed communications.

t ll tUK

■ When adopting UC, what is the most important thing for businesses to consider?

!I’m always concerned when individuals start talking

about technology within enter-prise without understanding why they’re using it. At Forrester, we talk about a POST model: the idea of People, Objectives, Strate-gy and Technology. Technology is that last piece of the puzzle. (With UC technology) we recommend individuals consider: who is us-ing it? How are they using it? When are they’re using it?

■ So how can companies implement UC to their advantage?

!Link it to the objectives within the organisation. Is

there a sales distribution issue? Then perhaps look at integrating some of the functionality with your existing system so you help facilitate the process fl ow there. Address specifi c needs. Are you having difficulty getting the right people together to solve a problem because they are dis-persed over multiple locations? Then look at softphones, rich presence, etc. Identify those busi-ness objectives — and the people that are using it — to identify the right types of (UC) technology for you.

■ Is ‘managing access’ to UC important to businesses?

!Extending (UC) to everyone within your organisation

may be a very viable strategy for you. As well as guests, let’s say you have individuals coming in (to your company) as consultants; so think about security concerns — and not just at the end device. So it’s not just about managing the device, it’s about managing ac-cess to your information. Look at things like role-based access or location-based access.

QUESTION & ANSWER

Onica King Analyst, Forrester

JANUARY 2013 · 7AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

2013’s best fi t mobility option? Choose your own device (CYOD)

■ Azzurri Communications recently conducted an ‘opinion exchange’ survey with over 300 UK IT Directors to establish their BYOD policies and preferences.

The results and analysis were sur-prising — as they revealed that ‘Choose Your Own Device’ (CYOD) is currently the least common enter-prise mobility strategy, but is actual-ly the best fi t for 63 per cent of UK or-ganisations when mapped against their stated objectives.

38 per cent of respondents said that they’d embraced Bring Your Own De-vice (BYOD) for at least part of their or-ganisation, but usually for a minority of employees (often just senior man-agement). Only 11 per cent of organisa-tions have introduced BYOD to more than 75 per cent of their employees.

The most popular enterprise mo-bility policy was a defensive ‘Don’t Bring Your Own Device’ (DBYOD) policy. 50 per cent of all respondents take this approach, with employee device choice strictly controlled.

The least common current policy (16 per cent) was ‘Choose Your Own De-vice (CYOD), where the organisation owns the SIM/contract, but provides employees with a choice of handsets.

To help IT leaders make the right choice for their organisation, Azzur-ri (an independent telecoms consul-tancy and integrator) conducted a thorough analysis of the responses, matching preferences with policies.

The issue with BYOD was em-ployers didn’t want to relinquish to-tal control of mobilising their work-force. This meant BYOD was the best fi t for just 9 per cent of the respond-ers, while CYOD was the best fi t for

63 per cent. The defensive DBYOD ap-proach came in at 28 per cent.

CYOD enables IT leaders to remain in control of billing, support and

security, while still being able to em-ployees a choice of cutting edge de-vices to ensure they stay productive and feel empowered.

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■ The full report and analysis can be downloaded here: www.azzurricommunications.com/byod-opinionexchange

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■ There are now approximate-ly 6.8 billion active mobile con-nections worldwide representing over 3.2 billion individual sub-scribers. The number of connect-ed devices will grow to 24 billion by 2020, creating opportunities for consumers and particularly businesses across many sectors, including automotive, utilities, healthcare, education, consumer electronics and transport.

Changing livesNear Field Communication (NFC) is a service that will play a key role in the mobile future and is a criti-cal link between our digital life and the connected world that physi-cally surrounds us. NFC today is a

crucial enabler for a whole array of new services that will become in-dispensable in people’s lives and to business in the future. The mar-ket potential and business revenue opportunity from NFC is signifi -cant — nearly 1.5 billion SIM-based handsets will have been sold world-wide by 2016, supporting transac-tions of more than $50 billion.

NFC opens up entirely new possi-bilities and mobile operators are en-gaging with adjacent industries as

they look to NFC to provide ticket-ing for transport or entertainment services, access solutions for hotel or rental cars, or information ex-change services in areas such as re-tail or museums. NFC can help busi-nesses to create a tailored and dy-namic location-based connection to the consumer, build one-to-one marketing opportunities and de-velop real-time customer analytics.

Adding valueThe retail industry is a key partner for payment and additional value-added services that will make the shopping experience more effi-cient, more attractive to consumers and more profi table for business. For instance, customers with a

mobile phone will have the advan-tage of getting eCoupons from mer-chants and receiving the receipt di-rectly to their phone. Consumers will be able to read smart tags in and outside of stores and get up-to-date information and off ers, creat-ing a whole new information and commerce experience, one that is much more personalised and con-textualised for the user and of more value to the business.

NFC is happening now, in many areas around the world, in many diff erent applications, and this can only accelerate as industries invest more in this technology.

MICHAEL O’HARA

info.uk@mediaplanet.com

Mobile services are changing the lives of billions of people and businesses globally, says Michael O’Hara, chief marketing offi cer at the GSMA, the organisation that represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide.

NFC: THE CRITICAL LINK BETWEEN OUR DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL WORLDS

Michael O’Hara Chief Marketing Offi cer, GSMA

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A MOBILE FUTURENFC is opening up many new possibilities for consumers and businesses alike PHOTO: SHUTTERSTOCK

MOBILE SECURITY

Mobile devices have been game-changers, security wise

1Beware of phishing. For ex-ample, if you connect your

device to a free Wi-Fi hotspot, you have no idea that you are con-necting to the real hotspot be-cause anyone can create one.

Businesses should think differently about mobile device security

2Know what employees are using devices for — and

have security policies in place to disable devices if necessary.

Have a dedicated and ring-fenced environment for mobile communications

3Eff ective security systems do exist for mobile devices,

but they should be considered on an application by application ba-sis. Carefully consider the nature of the information going across the service — and apply an appro-priate service context for that par-ticular communications channel.

The Bring Your Own device (BYOD) culture is growing

4If a business is going to give employees a smartphone or

tablet — and, as part of that, ac-cess to the company network — it should make the assumption that the user is going to let other people access the device, or that the device is going to be stolen. So the business should be protect-ing individual services and mak-ing sure users have to log in over encrypted channels.

Make sure SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is enabled on email

5It amazes me how many companies don’t do this! Em-

ployees are allowed to send a pass-word and username to log-in to the company email server ‘in the clear’.

Always PIN or password protect devices

6It’s a real problem when peo-ple use the same password

across multiple services. Ideally, passwords should be diff erent.

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Mike HawkesChairman, Mobile Data Association

10 · JANUARY 2013 AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET

Complexity, interoperability and integration with existing systems. Ironically, getting different “unified communications” systems to talk to each other is not a trivial task. Security and compliance have always been important as well and now, with the rise of BYOD (bring your own device), there are additional challenges on those fronts.

CIOs are under pressure to deliver increased productivity and a better user experience. While UC is not new, the key challenge remains the transition from legacy systems to a full UC solution. Integrating collaboration components into the existing infrastructure as well as the deployment and management of the UC components is no easy task for an already stretched IT department.

The workplace has mobilised tremendously, effectively changing from desk-based work to mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Businesses must meet these new challenges to effi ciently manage devices, allowing both private and personal data to co-exist, tethering devices securely to the network and ensuring enterprise data, applications and email remain safe.

Look at the cost andcomplexity of integrating smart devices into the organisation successfully, and ensure that the infrastructure that supports them is both open and based on industry standards — not proprietary. This allows for the integration of as many devices as possible and gives the best opportunity for a business to integrate a suite of enterprise-grade UC apps.

Benefits are twofold:individual user pro-

ductivity and streamlin-ing corporate collaboration.

For example, will less time be spent at the beginning of a conference call connecting all participants? Would, say, the speed of purchasing approval be improved if UC infrastruc-ture knew the presence status of the manager responsible for sign-off ?

Service providers will increasingly offer full UC solutions combining consistent, best of breed UC applications, IT and networking, but a single-point-of-contact and a single SLA for the service, combined with per user pricing to allow for elasticity in demand are also key. Experience is always important. At Colt, we have implemented a full set of UC tools for our 5,000 employees.

Our customers see savings from lower IT management and administration costs, less trav-el, inclusive call charges and above all, increases in produc-tivity. Genuine ROI is achieved by delivering UC as part of a wider business strategy with buy-in from across the organ-isation. By implementing a technology strategy that drives business transformation, the CIO can demonstrate the value of technology investment.

Though vendors claim to provide end-to-end solutions, they generally are not able to do so. Depending on their vintage, they come at UC through one of these three lenses — video conferencing, telephony or enterprise collaboration but not many provide the complete package. It is what it is and enterprises should pick the vendors that best match their main use cases.

It’s not just about technology.Do not assume employees will automatically adopt UC. Don’t treat UC as just infrastructure but think of how it can be wo-ven into the business process-es — ROI results from the lat-ter. Think beyond horizontal use cases like cutting down travel and leverage UC for verticalised applications. Be

aware of security and com-pliance concerns.

Question 1:What are the challenges businesses face with regards to unifi ed communications?

Question 2:What do businesses need to consider when choosing vendors?

Question 3:How can businesses adopting unifi ed communications ensure a return on their investment?

Kashyap Kompella

Analyst,

Real Story

Group

Nigel Moulton EMEA CTO,

Avaya

Jon Bennett VP Portfolio &

Strategy, Colt

Ask theexperts

PANEL OF EXPERTS

Compatibility and integration are the biggest challenges. For a truly successful UC project, phone systems, desktop applications and mobile phones all need to talk to each other. For almost all fi rms, these will be provided by diff erent suppliers. When you factor in meeting room videoconferencing or video to the desktop, the complexity increases.

No one vendor can offer the full range of UC components or integration capability. So research the market and fi nd organisations of a similar profi le to yours, and see how they’ve been successful. We’d recommend working with a systems integrator with strong experience and accreditations with a number of the key vendors, who can bring an independent view on what will work for you — and what won’t.

Well-managed UC projects should always reduce exist-ing system costs and telecoms costs. However, UC has the po-tential to transform the way or-ganisations operate. Employee productivity improves across the board, as staff are more easi-ly contactable and gain from ad-ditional (and often more appro-priate) tools to collaborate.

Rufus Grig

Chief

Technology

Offi cer, Azzurri

Communications

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