Unifying Unified Communications

The result, for the end user, is a far more organized and directed way of communicating with employees, partners and customers. But, as often is the case in technology, simplifying things for customers leads to an increase in complexity for those providing the service. The drive to efficiently provide these services is deeply interconnected with the need for standards and other ways of linking and organizing these disparate elements – which are at different points in their internal evolution – into a coherent whole.

In a general sense, there are three levels at which UC tools and systems must be able to efficiently work together:

* The first level is the different communications channels themselves. This level of standards already is established, even if some firms still work in a non-standard – proprietary – fashion. For instance, the world of VoIP increasingly is adopting the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) as a means of establishing, managing voice calls. Likewise, the video world uses the H.323 standard as a way to traffic video. These disparate standards efforts are independent of any holistic UC structure.

* The middle level of UC standards deals with the amalgamation of the different communications channels, “modalities,” in the fancy vernacular used by some in the UC field, into systems that work together efficiently. This can be called the “intra vendor” level. A UC platform from a vendor can either be cobbled together superficially or linked at a deeper level. The latter is far more efficient in terms of management capabilities and eliminating redundancies.

* The highest level is enabling UC systems from different vendors to communicate with each other. There are many instances in which it behooves organizations to link systems together. For instance, companies suddenly married via an acquisition are as likely as not to have different UC vendors. Likewise, companies embarking on long-term relationships requiring close cooperation would benefit from UC connectivity. These firms also may have different UC vendors.