The worlds of telephony and business applications have
collided at some speed.
Nortel and Microsoft's recent alliance is
one indication of this union, representing a telephony and an
applications supplier working together on products that bridge
the two worlds.
There is now a raft of products that are now available to knit
together the two sides, such as online team collaboration tools,
dual handsets that can access a single set of contacts and diaries
and, of course, voice and video over IP.
This union of telephony and business applications has given
birth to "unified communications", a term that encompasses the
ability to use a single mobile handset and a single universal inbox
to unite diverse types of communication.
"Unified communications has become the inclusive name for a
converging set of voice, data and video infrastructure services
that integrate with common business applications to reduce typical
communication bottlenecks," says Elizabeth Herrell, vice- president
at Forrester Research.
Forrester Research defines unified communications as linked
communication technologies - for example voice, with collaboration
services, such as e-mail, calendaring, instant messaging and
presence - that improve workers' ability to interact with
co-workers more quickly and effortlessly.
There are two angles from which an IT manager can approach
unified communications. One is from the telephony side, where the
analogue telephony server - generally a fridge-sized piece of
hardware - is replaced with a new IP- enabled public branch
exchange (PBX) server from a networking and telecoms supplier such
as Cisco, Nortel, BT or Avaya.
The other is to implement a software applications platform from
the likes of Microsoft or IBM, the two main suppliers in this
field. These platforms allow the user to add layers of unified
communications applications as they are required.
However, most users go for a combination of both, and Microsoft
and IBM both partner with the PBX software providers to give users
advanced IP telephony systems. Among the most popular telephony-
centric unified communications platforms are Cisco Unified (CU),
which includes CU Callmanager, Cisco Unity Unified Messaging, CU
Presence Server, and CU Meetingplace.
Based around core application servers, the platforms centre on a
converged IP network infrastructure which has the ability to carry
both voice and data traffic. These Cisco products support advanced
desktop call facilities and can integrate multimedia messages,
allowing them to be accessed by fixed and mobile devices.
Support for and enhancements to Cisco's presence, collaboration,
and instant messaging capabilities is in the pipeline for future
releases. Cisco partners with both IBM and Microsoft for
asynchronous collaboration capabilities, a term which refers to
things like instant messaging and e-mail.
Nortel's Multimedia Communication Server 5100 is another popular
platform that offers integrated audio, video and web conferencing
capabilities and advanced telephony. Nortel's unified
communications system integrates into the Nortel Communication
Server 1000 and allows desktop users to use presence-based services
through the use of session initiation protocol (Sip).
Sip is a key technology in unified communications that helps to
facilitate services like presence, which can tell all users of the
system the location and status of each member. Sip can also be used
to facilitate integrated messaging, conferencing systems that use
different types of interfaces, and collaboration applications.
Alcatel Omnitouch UC is another platform that runs on an
IP-enabled PBX, and is integrated into Alcatel's Omni PCX
Enterprise suite. Like the other competitive products, Omnitouch
offers messaging, fixed and mobile device support, and web and
videoconferencing integration. The software also integrates with
both Lotus Notes and Domino, and Microsoft Outlook and Exchange to
enable instant messaging. Alcatel plans to add advanced presence
functions in a future release of the software.
Other popular unified communications systems, offering a range
of applications and functions, include Mitel Live Business Gateway,
Avaya's one-X and Multivantage, Oracle Communications and Mobility
Server and Oracle Collaboration Suite, and Siemens Hipath
Openscape.
On the software platform side two suppliers lead the market.
These are IBM, with Lotus Notes and Domino, and Microsoft, with
Exchange Server and Outlook.
The main building blocks of Microsoft's latest unified
communications product set are Exchange Server, Office and Live
Communications Server - which is soon to be replaced by Office
Communications Server 2007 (OCS 2007). This combination brings
together elements of telephony, collaboration, presence and
asynchronous communication like e-mail and instant messaging.
OCS 2007 is due to be released in mid-2007, and will provide
standalone PC-to-phone and phone-to-PC communication
capabilities.
Microsoft is, therefore, touting it as a more cost-effective way
to integrate voice over IP (VoIP) into an existing telephony
infrastructure, without needing to carry out an expensive network
overhaul.
With the new voice server, users will be able to instantly
launch a phone call from within Office applications by clicking on
another user's name. It also has native support for Sip, so
organisations can deploy enterprise-wide presence and secure
instant messaging, as well as video and web conferences.
OCS 2007 has a client called the Office Communicator, which will
offer real-time collaboration using instant messaging, presence,
application sharing, white-boarding, online voting and web
conferencing. OCS 2007 can also be used in conjunction with
Microsoft Sharepoint for team collaboration and portal
capabilities, as well as Microsoft Office, to provide real-time
collaboration features from within the Office applications.
One key feature is the ability to route voice calls and other
communications into a single "universal" inbox. Mark Deakin,
product manager for the unified communications group at Microsoft,
says, "By unifying your inbox, you can take voice mails, e-mails
and faxes and put them all into one place. For Exchange Server 2007
the next important piece of the jigsaw is on the presence side -
knowing if someone is available to speak or not.
"The vision is that whenever you want to collaborate with
anyone, all you will need is their name. Unified communications is
like DNS for phone numbers. At the most, you should be able to give
an e-mail address and a phone number," says Deakin.
Then, whether the client application is Outlook, Microsoft
Sharepoint or a customer relationship management (CRM) programme,
users should be able to start an instant message, a video
communication, a voice call or send e-mail, said Deakin. "You want
technology to work for you and not get in the way of the important
communication," he says.
In terms of presence, Microsoft is currently working on ways to
change the level of presence that a user can exhibit. For example,
within an organisation everyone can see that a certain staff member
is in a meeting, along with their phone number. But outside the
organisation, users can only ascertain that the user is busy.
IBM is working along similar lines with its unified
communications products, which centre on the Lotus Notes client and
Domino server, and Lotus Sametime 7.5 communications platform.
A new version of the Lotus Sametime instant messaging and
collaboration software - 7.5.1 - is due to ship at Easter. "Lotus
Sametime provides an open, extensible software platform that
integrates rich presence, instant messaging, e-mail, unified
messaging, web, voice, video, telephony and business applications
across multi-supplier environments," says Bruce Morse,
vice-president for Lotus unified communications software.
An important part of IBM's strategy is to integrate Sametime
with CRM and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications as
well as mobile clients, which are also projects that Microsoft is
working on.
However, IBM uses the open source Eclipse development
architecture, and its applications integrate with Microsoft Outlook
and Office applications and support Linux servers and Apple
Macintosh clients.
IBM's recent Lotusphere user conference has given an indication
of where its unified communications strategy was heading.
"Rooted in IBM's Lotus Sametime real-time collaboration
platform, major wow factors came from demos involving real-time
communications, including VoIP and telephony, instant messaging,
presence awareness and web conferencing capabilities," says Jim
Murphy, research director at AMR Research.
"IBM's latest unified communications product is not just a
discrete, general-purpose productivity product, but a platform and
set of services made available to other systems and processes - and
not only those governed and managed by IBM products," according to
Murphy0.
"This means that companies using partner products, and even
competitive products such as Microsoft Office, can avail themselves
of real-time collaboration services."
As the Notes and Domino platform gives users access to different
modes of communication from a single application or interface, IBM
has also been working on ways to manage this recently unified pool
of communications.
Lotus Notes 8, the next version of the e-mail and communications
platform, will incorporate features that allow users to organise
and share e-mail, instant messages, text, video and voice
documents, and link them to a particular activity or project. This
will bring those communications and documents out of their
traditional "silos", says IBM.
The direction that IBM's unified communications strategy is
heading in is towards "social software" that allows workers to
develop their informal interactions and relationships using the
latest technologies, says Gartner research director Nikos
Drakos.
At the January Lotusphere conference, IBM announced Lotus
Connections, an integrated and extensible set of social-software
services designed for businesses, and expected it to be available
in the first half of this year. The services include user profiles
based on roles and interests, communities, social bookmarks,
activities (business projects) and blogs.
It uses Web 2.0 technologies like Ajax and syndication standards
RSS and Atom to enable content and communication sharing.
"Given IBM's vulnerable position in the e-mail and calendaring
market, Connections could provide it with an opportunity to shift
from traditional, e-mail-centred collaboration and communication to
new social-software-based community models, which would enable it
to appeal to users outside its traditional installed base," says
Drakos.
With Connections, IBM is using the leading-edge technology to
link communication more deeply into collaboration.
But it remains to be seen whether traditional enterprise users
will adopt it, says Drakos. "Younger, web-savvy end-users are
already asking for an application like Connections, but some face
resistance from senior IT and business managers, who may be hostile
to the very idea of social-software deployments," he says.
So, for many organisations, VoIP may be as far as they are
willing to go in terms of unified communications - for the time
being at least.
Orange and Alcatel-Lucent form IP delivery
alliance
Comment on this article:
computer.weekly@rbi.co.uk