The Unified-View (Part 2)

By Art Rosenberg

Back | (Part 2)

Needless to say, I felt badly about interrupting his meeting and would have left a message if I knew that. I don’t know if my party was notified about my call by a ringing phone or a quiet screen display, but he did receive notification of my being on the line and did not bounce me into voice mail. Alternatively, if we were both properly multi-modally equipped, I could have been less interruptive of his meeting by initiating an IM exchange.

Even if the availability was acceptable for both parties, the choice of medium modality might have to dynamically change to conform to the constraints of one of parties. The press is reporting increasing restrictions being imposed on users who try to communicate while driving a car. Laws against using cell phones without speech controls while driving are increasing, while, in Germany, fines are being increased for drivers who try to look at text messages. So what if the person you are trying to contact via text IM is driving a car at the moment, can you switch to Voice IM?

Finally, of course, as a contact initiator today you are still forced to be aware of the kind of communication device capabilities a mobile recipient happens to have access to at the moment. Is it voice only, SMS-capable, cross-modal (TTS), etc.?

WHERE IS THE ROI FOR DYNAMIC USER MODALITY MANAGEMENT? PRODUCTIVITY!
The use of IP telephony and VoIP to support presence/availability/modality management must provide some form of ROI to the enterprise in addition to benefiting individual users. We have addressed this issue in a past white paper, Unified Communication Productivity: New Analytics for Enterprise Management, available from our Web site.

In our paper, we discuss individual communication productivity, saving a user’s time and effort in trying to contact and respond to other users, as being a basic component of group communication productivity, which is getting a task done more quickly by two or more individuals. We feel that the latter has more direct value to the enterprise, because group activities and tasks more directly reflect enterprise operational productivity and bottom-line results.

If we consider that presence/availability/modality management technology is the key to optimizing the benefits of converged communications, not only within the enterprise organization, but also for outside contacts (customers and business partners), we can realize revenue-generating benefits that are far greater than simply reducing existing costs. Reducing costs do not benefit individual users outside the company, particularly customers. By increasing the productivity of both callers/contact initiators in addition to contact recipients, the enterprise can maximize communications effectiveness and efficiencies for all enterprise operations and the people they deal with.

The traditional telephone call center has been evolving into multi-channel contact centers, where the customer/caller typically initiates the modality of a contact and response (phone call, e-mail, instant text message). However, as customers become multi-modal and mobile, they will also be fair game for practical presence management strategies for routing or returning calls and messages.

“INTELLIGENT DISPATCH”
Field activity management has always been dependent on real-time communications for determining personnel availability and delivering task assignments to mobile personnel. Clearly, real-time presence/availability/modality management will be operationally critical for establishing efficient communication contacts with enterprise people in the field.

However, another useful function supported by wireless technology will also come into play in the form of geo-location tracking of personalized mobile devices. Knowing where a person is can be another key to determining whether or not communication contact should be initiated with that person. In the case of field support or emergency dispatch situations, notifications and two-way connections can be established selectively and cost-efficiently with dynamic knowledge of current location, busy status, and the modality of contact suitable for the recipient’s situation.

IS THE ENTERPRISE MARKET READY FOR CONVERGED COMMUNICATIONS?
While the needs were always there, and the technologies for converged communications network and server infrastructures are moving forward slowly but surely, enterprise organizations are facing the challenge of effectively converging their “communication applications” support for multi-modal users and wireless devices. Telephony, text and voice messaging, and even Instant Messaging, are still organizational “silos” in most organizations.

Initial results of our enterprise survey for the International Association of Messaging Professionals (IAMP), who represent predominantly voice-oriented telecommunications managers within medium to large enterprises, show that these technology managers are ill-prepared for the coming shifts in traditional communications usage. Only 14 percent claimed to fully understand the operational implications of convergence, 69 percent of the respondents didn’t know when they would start planning to migrate to converged communications technologies, but 38 percent did indicate that technology management was starting to converge within their organizations. There is obviously more work to be done before enterprise organizations will be ready to manage mobile, multi-modal technology for their users.

SUMMARY
The need for personalized, multi-modal communication management within the enterprise, using IP-based presence technology, is being addressed not only by new functionality to IP-based telephony call servers (PBXs) like Avaya’s Unified Communication Center, Nortel Networks Multimedia Communications Server 5100, and Siemens’ Openscape, but also from the major e-mail and text messaging technology providers as well.

Microsoft’s Office Live Communications Server 2003 (formerly called Real-Time Communications server, “Greenwich”), Windows XP, and Windows/MSN Messenger clients have adopted SIP and SIMPLE for their real-time messaging facilities, while IBM’s WebSphere is also aiming at supporting real-time needs of person-to-person communication flexibility and multi-modality through voice connectivity and accessibility management.

As usual, however, the enterprise technology providers have focused their initial efforts on supporting the communication needs of personnel within the medium to large enterprise organization, particularly new speech communication interfaces for mobile users and call /message screening and rules-based notification management for “expected” callers and messages.

With the combination of wireless multi-modal devices and wireless network services, we see personalized presence/availability/modality management technology extending end-to-end across both private and public IP networks for inter-enterprise communications and collaboration, as well as consumer/customer interactions. The adoption of SIP by the 3GPP and 3GPP2 consortia as the call control standard for 3G networks will enable wireless carriers to support enterprise groups in addition to individual consumers. When flexible and effective multi-modal communications management becomes universal and dynamically reactive for all callers and recipients, we will then see the true ROI of IP communications beyond just reducing costs.

WHAT DO YOU THINK?
How should personalized multi-modal contact availability be managed in the enterprise? How will it integrate with wireless carrier services (Wi-Fi, 3G)? Where will the multi-modal “Buddy Lists” be maintained? What kind of enterprise security will be required for “communication applications?” What role will current enterprise technology managers have in supporting individual user needs for converged communications management?

Let us know your thoughts by sending your comments to [email protected]. You can also participate in our forums.

ENTERPRISE SURVEY OF CONVERGED COMMUNICATIONS MIGRATION
The Unified-View has started a comprehensive survey initiative to track the migration of enterprise organizations towards converged communications management. The ongoing survey is accessible through CommWeb and is open to enterprise technology managers responsible for current telephone or messaging communications and their migration to a converged network infrastructure and multi-modal communication devices.

Participants in this study will be rewarded with up-to-date perspective reports of how enterprise organizations are selectively migrating from their current communication technologies to support various user needs for enterprise-wide mobility and multi-modal communications.

To participate in this survey now, go to: http://cmp.inquisiteasp.com/surveys/e42wy8 and be sure to type in “TMC” as your Group Identification Code on the first page.

UNIFIED VIEW APPEARANCES

IAMP Annual Conference, Scottsdale, AZ, October 19-23, 2003
The Unified-View will be keynoting the annual conference of the International Association of Messaging Professionals (IAMP), an independent group of enterprise communication managers who are focusing on the challenges of migrating legacy telecommunications and messaging towards converged, multi-modal communications, including new “communication security” requirements for the enterprise. The impact of convergence on security issues such as communication service disruption, theft of service, and privacy violations will be discussed from both a technology provider and enterprise perspective.

In conjunction with this conference, IAMP commissioned the Unified-View to survey its membership regarding their organizations’ perspectives and progress towards implementing and supporting unified communications technologies. The initial results of this study will be presented and discussed at the conference, which will take place in Scottsdale, AZ, on October 19-23, 2003.

This year’s conference is open to IAMP members, current Avaya customers, and any organization that is considering the acquisition of Avaya technology. For further details, go to the IAMP conference Web site. 

Avaya Forum, Barcelona, Spain, October 21-24, 2003
The Unified-View will be discussing the future of traditional telecommunications management with Avaya’s EMEA customers, partners, and prospects, including additional ongoing survey data perspectives of enterprise migrations towards converged communications.

New White Paper
Don’t forget to pull down your free copy of our latest white paper, “Migrating to Enterprise-wide Communications: The Branch Office Dilemma,” on enterprise-wide communication applications in a distributed enterprise. Simply go to our Web site – www.unified-view.com, fill out the form, and download the paper.

Art Rosenberg and David Zimmer are veterans of the computer and communications industry and formed The Unified-View to provide strategic consulting to technology and service providers, as well as to enterprise organizations, in migrating towards converged wired and wireless unified communications. They focus on practical user requirements, implementation issues, and new benefits of multi-modal communication technologies for individual end users, both as consumers and as members of enterprise working groups. The latter includes identifying new responsibilities for enterprise communications management to support changing operational usage needs most cost-effectively.

Considered to be objective industry thought leaders, Art Rosenberg and David Zimmer have been publishing their highly-acclaimed syndicated column on unified messaging and unified communications for over four years to a worldwide audience of consultancies, technology providers, service providers, and enterprise technology managers. Both principals are popular speakers at leading technology conferences and organized the first programs in the industry focused on the subject of unified messaging/communications. The Unified-View's website (www.unified-view.com) is also considered to be a leading source for information on the evolution of unified communications.

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