For about two years, “Unified communications” has been the hot term in the communication and collaboration arena. Leading voice, instant-messaging, video and unified-messaging vendors have revamped their product-marketing efforts around promoting their products as a UC solution. Meanwhile, numerous start-ups have entered the market with UC solutions of their own. The primary purpose of UC is to solve the confusion brought about by myriad different communications applications, such as desktop voice, mobile voice, instant messaging and video. Yet, the very discussion of unified communications has created even more confusion and the need for a common architecture to classify UC components and services and how they interrelate.
Defining Unified Communications
In the recent Nemertes Benchmark Unified Communications and Collaboration, we defined a model that defines UC as an architecture, rather than as a product or application.
Our belief is that organizations don't simply buy “UC”, rather, they interconnect a variety of services, applications, and systems to create UC. UC, essentially, is a model for understanding how organizations can integrate various communication and collaboration applications into a unified set of interfaces, gateways and functions.
The Nemertes UC model, shown in the Figure below, defines the following components:
* UC applications (in yellow) – the services that enable users to communicate and collaborate, both internally and externally
* User interfaces (in purple) – the methods that provide access into various UC services. Interfaces may be stand-alone desktop or mobile clients (e.g. a real-time communication dashboard such as IBM Lotus Sametime, Microsoft Office Communicator, or other client), or they could provide UC services access via a portal, office application (Microsoft Office or IBM Lotus Notes) or through custom-written applications designed for a specific organization, vertical, or job function
* Common protocols (in beige) – the standards for linking various services to each other, as well as to external applications via gateways, or application interfaces
* Presence (in green) –the “glue” of unified communications, enabling applications to share information about user status and availability
* External interfaces (in blue) – the interfaces to external systems, such as legacy PBXs, external wireless networks, or business applications via Web services or service-oriented architecture (SOA) frameworks
* Management, directory and security services (in red) – the core infrastructure to support UC. This includes security, network and performance management and optimization, and directory and identity services.
This framework provides a reference that organizations can use to classify UC components, and determine how each of their vendors fit into an overall UC architecture. From the vendor perspective, this architecture captures the major components of UC, providing a common framework by which to classify product and/or service offerings. Creation of a common architecture for Unified Communications provides a template for discussion and evaluation of UC products, services, and solutions, and hopefully reduces confusion around what UC is (or isn't).
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