A Small Step For Your IT Department, a BIG Step To Your Organization

By Sagee Ben-Zedeff

Categories: Collaboration, Video Conferencing

October 28th, 2008

Unified Communication (UC) is one of the hottest buzz words in the IT market, potentially in the whole tech market. Ask a few people what UC is, and you’ll be sure to get various answers. Still, most will agree, it involves uniting existing communication systems and tools (phone system, internet) with more advanced productivity and communication tools (such as instant messaging, video conferencing, and web collaboration) to deliver a complete solution.

Bottom line – UC is aimed at creating adaptive workspaces – allowing for workers to collaborate across any workspace, accelerating decision making and endorsing innovation across the organization. Sounds great?  Well, a recent Forrester Research study suggests that many potential buyers of UC technologies, 55% of the 2,187 North American and European companies queried said that there is “confusion about the value of unified communication for their company”.

This “confusion” leads to “no increase in firms buying UC…because they’re not able to define it very clearly…”. But at the same time, as Marty Parker from No Jitter wisely notes, 40% of those firms have already deployed IP audio and IP web conferencing, 37% have deployed video conferencing, and those adoption figures continue to rise. So you can see that this is indeed somewhat confusing.

Parker claims that audio, web and video conferencing are “well within the definition of UC”, but let’s put the definitions aside for a moment, and suggest this: instead of seeking out a “total” UC solution, waiting for standards to mature and prices to be lowered, or that single compelling application from one vendor to come out, why not deploy a conferencing solution first, video conferencing preferably, and take that first solid step towards an true adaptive workspace today?!

You already know that I’m a big fan of desktop video conferencing solutions (Frost & Sullivan are too). If I was an IT manager, I would definitely go with desktop video conferencing before deploying a complete unified communication solution in my organization. Here are my reasons why:

1. KISS – Start with a mature, proven technology, instead of diving into the undefined, chaotic world of UC. See technology work for you, then progress.
2. Setup time – Deploying desktop video in the organization is easy. I mean EASY. Connect a webcam (in case it’s not there already), click on a URL, quick download and install, and you’re set. Hell, employees can actually do that by themselves!
3. Money, money, money – Desktop video costs hardly ANYTHING!   (Or at least should). UC solutions require monthly license fees or user license fees, which – at least the last time I checked – cost a considerable sum of money. If you consider a mass deployment in your organization, desktop conferencing seems like the affordable way to go.
4. Telework – Desktop video conferencing allows your employees to work seamlessly from anywhere as if they were actually in the offices. You hardly need anything else (other than a VPN client, an instant messaging client and an e-mail client, but then you probably have them already) to get telework to be effective in your organization.
5. ROI – Desktop video conferencing reduces travel (travel between corporate branches, suppliers, customers, service providers) without requiring anything else. And as it costs nothing (reason #3) and is simple to deploy (reason #2), the ROI is quite obvious.
6. Connectivity – Desktop video conferencing works well with your previous communication equipment (IP phones, mobile phones, conference room system) and it works with the video conferencing systems that you are considering (HD Video Conferencing systems, Telepresence).  It can also be enhanced to be High Definition (using an HD cam and HD-enabled client) and even supports most UC solutions that you may progress to.

(CC)

So you see – with all due respect to buzz words, if you want to gain most of the UC vision while risking/spending as little as possible, deploying desktop video conferencing is surely the right first step for you. It’s a rather small step for an IT department (simple, doesn’t cost much, it’s quick to deploy), but a definite BIG step for your organization. You don’t have to work at NASA to know it’s the right thing to do.