What’s the Bottom Line on UC?

The term UC is being used every where. Whatever happened to Unified Messaging (UM)? We skipped right over it. Google (News - Alert) Voice seems to have the right idea: Put voice, email and chat in the same portal. Along the way the platforms seemed to have skipped this and gone on to bigger and better things. It appears to me that the transition for the consumers would have been better in baby steps. But UM is hardly even mentioned any more. When I talk to VoIP providers about offering hosted email to their customers, they ask me why? It goes back to UM for me. I want one inbox that I can access from my PC, laptop or smartphone.

Eric Thomas, chief executive offider of FreedomVOICE (News - Alert) Systems, said that UC means: “Being able to deliver voice, fax and email through one interface. In our case, we deliver voice and fax to the end users’ email.”

Todd Regan, vice president of marketing at AireSpring (News - Alert), isn’t “overly concerned about how we position unified devices and what they should be labeled or which specific features they should have. For me, the key is that we are able to integrate with these IP enabled devices the moment they become available to customers… We firmly support technology and change.”

Ultimately it is about enabling IP communications through one portal. That’s why the talk now is about Unified Desktop, especially in the Contact Center space. The desktop being the one portal for first call resolution. For many workers, the portal device will either be a desktop IP phone, a laptop with a softphone app or a smartphone. Instead of a nifty acronymn, the one thing that both Thomas and Regan pointed out: It has to be about reliability delivered voice service. At the end of the day, that’s what makes the best connection — not text or email — but a voice talking to another person.

Boiled down, UC is about efficiency, cost reduction, improved customer service, productivity, down sizing and geographically dispersed workforce. UC is ultimately about real-time communications no matter the platform — SMS, email, text, voicemail, voice, fax. IT

Peter Radizeski is head of RAD-INFO (News - Alert), Inc., a consulting agency specializing in the telecom industry.

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