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Research and Markets: Unified Communications and Collaboration: Laying the Foundations for Business Process Flexibility and Innovation
DUBLIN, Ireland --(Business Wire)-- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/79baae/unified_communicat) has announced the addition of the "Unified Communications and Collaboration: Laying the Foundations for Business Process Flexibility and Innovation" report to their offering.
Business Issues
Business challenges continue to include the requirement for better flexibility, greater mobility, and to continuously improve business processes. In addition, organisations are always on the lookout for ways to reduce costs to keep ahead of the competition. The new breed of communications and collaboration technologies presents an opportunity for companies to realise these objectives. Many organisations are moving from traditional hierarchies based on command and control, to looser structures utilising collaboration and team work.
There is a fundamental shift from one-to-one to many-to-many communication. The integration with the Internet, the increasing mobility of employees, and the move towards virtual organisations, alongside the requirement to always improve profitability and customer service, means that enterprises must embrace the adaptability that services-based communications can provide.
There are a number of challenges that remain whilst enabling the requirement for providing flexible working for a diverse user community, including the home worker and 'road warrior'. One of these challenges is to secure the extended environment that most IT managers now need to support. There are many instances of successful attacks and loss of data, which includes finance companies and government agencies. The issue of security must be adequately addressed when contemplating utilising an IP-based environment. Whilst the introduction of voice and video on to the network presents new security worries, it does not, however, add any new vulnerability that did not previously exist.
Another challenge is providing an opportunity for the interaction of disparate employees and organisations. However, this inter- and intra-company interaction brought about through collaboration is not without its risks - loss of corporate intellectual property and commercially sensitive information, for example. But generally speaking, fostering innovation and a product formed through the collaborative efforts of several minds is likely to be inherently more valuable than the thoughts of a lone individual. Like cogs in a machine, bringing together the right people, at the right time, in the right way is what good management is all about, and in the current working environment this is difficult to achieve without collaborative-working tools. Effective management is a key capability in the unified environment where policies must drive availability, and visibility moves from individual point solutions to being system wide, along with the shift from fixed asset administration to dynamic asset utilisation. A cornerstone for the provision of multi-modal channels is the ability to deliver intelligent central performance management, enabling efficient use of the available resources. The accessibility of end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) supporting data, voice, and multimedia, is an important first step in the evolution towards an automated solution.
The reach and range of business processes continues to increase as organisations extend and expand their interactions with partners, suppliers, and customers; and so the need to integrate geographically dispersed teams into complex business processes presents something of a challenge for the IT manager. Fax, e-mail, pager, SMS, Web conferencing, video conferencing, and conventional teleconferencing are all in use today, yet many business processes are still hampered by ineffective collaboration. Organisations must therefore re-examine their corporate communication and collaboration strategies in order to better support business activities and objectives.
Technology Issues
Organisations are beginning to expand outside the traditional boundaries found in the past. The extended enterprise now requires a common IP-based infrastructure to capitalise on information mobility and the need to be more flexible. There is a requirement for greater location independence, with remote working becoming more popular and many employees no longer remaining in one place for any great length of time. In order for this flexibility and changes in work practices to be catered for it is becoming apparent that the existing separate silo'ed infrastructures are no longer the answer.
The need for new and enhanced service provision to support business requirements must drive infrastructure and technology deployment. A services-based approach is best suited to this environment to insulate developers and users from the complexity of the infrastructure, and to ease the integration of the different systems and communication mechanisms. There should be a move towards the provision of common integrated communication services, which are ideal for catering for a complex and distributed environment. Web services can also be utilised to mobilise information to all stakeholders.
Moving away from proprietary solutions for voice and data to a horizontal communications architecture will enable the communications environment to be broken down into separate layers, making use of industry standards to integrate the hardware, common services, and administration elements. This componentisation and services-based approach increases flexibility, enabling services to be developed independent of the equipment. Using IP-based components instead of vendordependent solutions improves scalability, along with driving down infrastructure costs with price/performance optimisation.
Key Topics Covered:
Section 1: Management Summary
Section 2: Introduction
Section 3: Business Strategies
Section 4: Planning and Implementation
Section 5: Unified Communications Architecture
Section 6: Unified Collaboration Systems
Section 7: Case Studies
Section 8: Market Analysis
Section 9: Vendor Profiles
Section 10: Glossary
Companies Mentioned:
- Alcatel-Lucent
- Avaya Inc.
- Cisco Systems, Inc.
- Ericsson, Inc.
- Eurodata Systems
- HP
- IBM Corporation
- Interactive Intelligence, Inc.
- Microsoft Corporation
- Mitel Networks Corporation
- NEC Unified Solutions, Inc.
- Nortel Networks Corporation
- Novell, Inc.
- ShoreTel, Inc.
- Siemens Enterprise Communications (SEC) GmbH & Co. KG
- TeleWare plc
- Vocera Communications Inc.
For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/79baae/unified_communicat
Source: Butler Group
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