The Payoff of IP
Communications to Enterprise Users: Exploiting Multi-modal Communications
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Enterprise organizations always have to look at
their communications technologies from two perspectives: Minimizing or
reducing costs to the company and providing added operational benefits to
users, where users are both company personnel and customers and business
partners.
The first target of converged IP communications has logically focused on
the cost reduction factors, such as:
- Shared use of LANs and WANs for voice, messaging, and data;
- PSTN “toll bypass” via VoIP networking;
- Centralization of communication servers and administration in a
distributed enterprise; and
- Flexible, self-provisioning of traditional wired phone moves, adds and
changes (MAC).
While these benefits are important to enterprise management in today’s
economic climate, they only set the stage for the functional needs of users.
And user needs, as both contact initiators as well as recipients, are why
the enterprise requires more flexible and effective communication
technologies in the first place!
So, in addition to the potentials of cost-reduction ROI through converged
voice and data IP networking, there has always been a reference by both
technology providers and industry pundits to vague “new applications” that
no one could really describe. Well, the real new communication benefit of
VoIP networking and IP telephony for users is not a new business
“application,” but rather a new set of contact capabilities that will
supplement and change traditional messaging and phone communications. This
new communication piece will be used by both person-to-person communication
applications such as enterprise voice and messaging systems, as well as by
business applications that need to contact individual users for
personalized, real-time services.
THE NEW PIECE: TWO-WAY PRESENCE/ AVAILABILITY/ MODALITY MANAGEMENT
While “presence” management began life as a means of Internet
connectivity for participants to access text chat groups, it has evolved
into a more general person-to-person form of connectivity and access control
for immediate message exchange that we now know as Instant Messaging. With
technology advances in VoIP and IP telephony standards, particularly Session
Initiation Protocol (SIP), and SIP for Instant Messaging and Presence
Leveraging Extensions (SIMPLE), presence management is no longer restricted
to desktop text messaging, but is rapidly becoming a key feature for
wireless multi-modal phones that can cost effectively connect mobile groups
and teams in “near real time” by either text or voice exchanges. The latter
is popularly known as “Push-to-Talk” (PTT) and is a new version of the old
half-duplex radio “walkie-talkies,” that I have characterized as Voice
Instant Messaging.
With SIP and SIMPLE, IP connectivity enables “intelligent” end-to-end
communications control, not just for recipients, but, maybe more
importantly, for contact initiators. Telephone calling has traditionally
always been a relatively wasteful “blind” contact attempt hoping that the
call recipient is accessible at a wired location and available (not busy).
That is why enterprise call centers have dedicated staffs or self-service
applications to insure that someone is available to answer a voice call.
E-mail and voice messaging have also been “blind” in that the message
originator could not know if or when their message would be picked up, let
alone when it would be responded to.
With new multi-modal devices, both handheld and at the desktop, there are
now new choices for initiating a communications contact, and, if there is a
real-time need for a response, that choice will be governed by the
circumstances of both the initiator and the recipient. After all, it is the
contact initiator that is triggering the communication and knows the need
for immediacy, not the recipient, but callers need better dynamic
“intelligence” about the recipient’s situation before blindly selecting the
modality of communication. And, I am not talking about simply looking at
someone else’s calendars or schedules, which realistically will never be
very accurate!
IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO
The modality of any real-time communication contact between two (or more)
people is dependent on the very dynamic situational status of all parties.
Whereas in the past, the contact initiator had to know (or guess) about
where the person was physically, what device address (telephone number) was
needed, whether they were busy talking on the phone, in a meeting, in a “do
not disturb” mode, etc., any real-time contact attempt usually wasted a lot
of the initiator’s time. And, if it blindly interrupted the recipient, time
priorities could be disrupted as well.
Just the other day, I tried to return a phone call to the president of a
company that developed a new speech-based “one-number” auto-attendant
product. After identifying myself by name, I was told that my party was not
at his desk and asked if I wanted to leave a message or to find him. Since I
wanted to talk to him now that I had taken the time to return his call, I
said “Find him!” After the automated secretary tried a couple of alternate
contact numbers, my party picked up his phone and said “Hello Art! I am in a
meeting. Can I call you back?”
Part 2
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