TMCnet Feature

By now it is clear that social networking and social communications are such established tools in both the consumer and business markets that it is inevitable new questions will be asked. Will social subsume UC, or will UC absorb social?

It might be more logical to say unified communications and social communications are “adjacent” to each other, but nothing is going to stop observers and suppliers from arguing about whether social communications “replaces,” “supplements” or “is incorporated into” unified communications.

But there's a reason one hears more talk these days about whether social media or social communications are "substitutes" for "unified communications." As it turns out, many business users see social media as complementary to unified communications, though in some cases, social tools are used as a substitute.

In the consumer world, social media hubs such as Facebook (News - Alert) and Google+ are taking on the role of the personal communicator, social networker, entertainment curator, search engine and directory. But voice, messaging and video are becoming parts of overall app functionality.

In the business market, there are similar trends. In most cases, social media and collaboration tools are viewed as a natural part of unified communications and are formally deploying it as part of a UC roll-out.

"You can have enterprise social software without unified communications, but no unified communications technology player worth its salt is without an enterprise social media strategy," says David Carr at Information Week.

You might say that this is another way of saying that communications tools used extensively and “typically” by enterprises have now expanded beyond phone calls, email and mobile phones to include messaging formats and social networks to such an extent that information technology managers now are grappling with ways to unify all the new tools, or most of the tools.

Blair Pleasant thinks it is pointless to argue about whether social communications will replace unified communications. Both are necessary, she argues.

Others might argue for yet another evolution, at some point. “Unified messaging” was succeeded by “unified communications,” which then was superseded by “collaboration.” The discussion now about how to view social communications means we might see the emergence of a new preferred terminology at some point.

Skeptics might argue that the terms change when the market doesn’t move fast enough to embrace the technology suppliers want enterprises to buy. Freshening the nomenclature thereby helps freshen up the products.

Lots of observers would predict further integration of social processes, applications and tools into a framework that uses both unified communications and social networks and communications.

Whether such moves actually mean all that much might be a continuing issue, though.