Sphere Communications’ Senior Vice President Todd Landry closed out the opening day at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO with an address that, if nothing else, provided some entertainment in the form of a short video parody of a scene involving Captain Kirk on the Starship Enterprise.

Kirk, or rather, his “likeness,” in an attempt to contact Bones via the ship’s central communications system, found himself accessing various other features, like voice mail, switching to French language prompts, or firing photon torpedoes. But, while the parody drew laughs from the audience, the message from Landry was more serious: Unified Communications is not about pushing series of buttons in hopes of achieving some desired result. Rather, it’s about all the different pieces of the communications system needing to be assimilated to behave as a single, congruent application, so that access is intuitive, not guesswork.

Indeed, Landry insisted — and rightfully so — that Unified Communications is going to be the big topic of the year, especially when you consider that “The Big M” has now thrown its hat in the ring.

Whereas communications has traditionally been about the minutes on a voice network, it has become so much more, and it is more than simply having multiple ways to communicate. It is really about creating a more effective business environment and about bringing those various communication methods together on a single, unified platform. It is about decreasing the friction created by different applications, and by different vendors providing those applications and services.

Really, explained Landry, the goal, now, is to turn IP PBXs into other business applications, interworking with the entire communications infrastructure — rather than simply having it as a piece of hardware attached to the communications system — and to gain the most from that interconnected system.

Landry explained that while features like click to call are nice to have, and are even quite useful at times, all the functions of a platform need to be both intuitive and connected, so that an entire organization wins.

One example is in the HR world. As Landry described, the steps involved in setting up a new employee on a communications network, or shutting down communications in the case of terminated employees, can often involve not only many steps, but many people as well. A well integrated system should enable entry of a user’s information once, and then the system will automatically provision the network resources — or remove them — for that employee.

He also surmised that there is more to unified communications than internal business processes — there is also the B2B aspect. For instance, as most outside communications now stand, an employee is directed to “dial 8 for an outside line.” But, he said, that really means, “dial 8 to go back to TDM.” And by doing that, many of the benefits of an IP Communications system are lost. In an all-IP world, it will not mater whether communications as intra-office or external.

A building block to achieving universal IP Communications, he claimed, is the adoption of IP trunking, which is the starting point to building a true IP-to-IP communications network and can help extend integrated business processed to the outside world.

“What we’re really enabling through people to people collaboration is greater efficiency and productivity,” he said.

In closing, he urged businesses to “stop thinking about your phone system and start thinking about your business.” An integrated platform, along with one that begins to extend that platform outside your network, is fundamental in facilitating a more efficient communications environment, both internally and externally.

To learn more about what Landry has in mind, and how Sphere Communications (News - Alert) can help your business take the first steps toward a truly unified communications platform, visit Sphere at Booth #910 at INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., this week.

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Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Prior to joining TMC (News - Alert), he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.