Unified communications (UC) is the next step in how we communicate, moving from phone and email to an integrated communications platform that seamlessly blends voice, video, chat and presence into a unified whole.
One of the big topics in UC right now is federation: the ability of one UC system to connect to another, even if it is a different UC provider. Through UC federation, multiple systems can come together and act as one even when they are separate systems.
Federation can be a useful tool. It accelerates communication between organizations, something that can be important for partners working together on a complex system. Sophisticated products such as automobiles and fighter jets, for which the engineering teams span across several companies but must work together, is one area where federation makes sense. By bringing together the different teams, time can be saved and errors can be reduced.
Having separate UC systems work together as one unified whole is particularly important when it comes to chat and presence. Chat and presence rely on systems integrating well, or they lose their effectiveness. While a video conference is something that employees must actively choose if they want to use it, chat and presence are passive communication technologies that work best when blended into an existing workflow. This requires UC federation for best results.
Unfortunately for small and medium-sized businesses, UC federation often is an option only for larger enterprises that can roll out big IT infrastructure solutions. It just isn’t practical for most smaller organizations to set up UC federated communication systems.
But a workaround is starting to emerge: Cloud-based UC systems.
An increasing number of businesses are starting to recognize the advantages of using the cloud for business communications. With a cloud solution, there’s no hardware to maintain and minimal capital expenditure. Instead, a full UC communications suite can be purchased off the shelf as a service. This not only saves money and hassle, but it also enables added flexibility to scale as needed.
Small and medium-sized businesses can take advantage of this cloud communications trend to gain UC federation when their budget might not otherwise allow. Some of the cloud-based UC providers are starting to offer federation as an option, which lets smaller firms get in on the integration.
This benefit is yet another reason why smaller firms should be looking at hosted telephone systems and hosted UC if they haven’t already. Cloud-based communications is a business equalizer, giving every business the enterprise-grade features and functionality that previously were only available to larger organizations.
Edited by Alisen Downey