Will IP & UC Shine in a Dark Economy?

For years there’s been an argument floating around that it’s becoming too expensive (and too much of a hassle, in the case of the airlines) to travel about the world willy-nilly, and that teleconferencing and other advanced forms of communications actually should become more widespread in bad times than in prosperous ones. Well folks, here comes the acid test. The world’s economy over the next 12 to 18 months should demonstrate the viability of everything we’ve been touting in these pages for years. Or not…

Certainly after 9/11, there was a spike in IP communications and teleconferencing/telepresence usage, but then it fell back to the previous upward curve. Video has exploded over the past six months, but that includes all forms of video, from IPTV (News - Alert) to trendy mobile video eagerly awaited by both youngsters who buy on impulse and the vendors who are more than happy to sell such technology to them. Yours Truly has always felt that whether or not an organization – be it corporate, nonprofit or governmental – actually used advanced mobile-centric communications depended more on the “corporate culture” of the organization than any actual or perceived benefit. That is, whether the organization was paranoid about having data escaping from the organization’s physical perimeter. Of course, these days, so many workers are mobile (or are teleworkers) that the “corporate perimeter” as such is around each device, not a particular building or campus.

There have also been strong economic arguments over the years that Small and Medium-Sized Businesses (SMBs) should use services rather than buy and maintain software and hardware on the premises.

All of these migration paths make sense, but just as it takes money to make money, it’s also necessary to spend some money to save money by upgrading your communications infrastructure. Far-sighted companies have already started to make their move, using systems that allow for a reasonably-paced introduction of advanced IP communication while at the same time working with older, legacy TDM-based computer telephony systems.

What nobody wants is an economic catastrophe of such proportions that it becomes impossible to spend any money to do anything. Persuading banks to loosen up credit has been a problem, even when the U.S. government forks over billions of dollars to them. Moreover, even if you send money directly to users as part of an economic “stimulus package”, they may simply apply the money to their mortgage or squirrel it away in the bank instead of actually spending it. One amusing solution I suggested to a friend of mine was that the government should buy up billions of dollars of gift certificates and simply mail them to every U.S. citizen, so they would be forced to buy actual goods. My very conservative friend countered that such an action would not be in the spirit of capitalism and had an even more bizarre suggestion – the government should start a sweepstakes contest where everyone happens to be a winner!

Washington, are you listening? <grin> IT

Richard Grigonis (News - Alert) is Executive Editor of TMC’s IP Communications Group.

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