Unified communications (UC) has been around as a market category now for a number of years. I wrote my first report on this topic in 2003 and I know I wasn't the first author to do so. So, UC has been a market in the making for over five years now, and despite the industry hype and age of the market, adoption of UC has remained sluggish. However, I do think the oncoming number of "mobile UC" solutions will act as a catalyst for adoption of UC as, in my opinion, mobile UC provides much more value than traditional desktop based UC and here's why.
Unified communications (UC) has been around as a market category now for a number of years. I wrote my first report on this topic in 2003 and I know I wasn't the first author to do so. So, UC has been a market in the making for over five years now, and despite the industry hype and age of the market, adoption of UC has remained sluggish. However, I do think the oncoming number of "mobile UC" solutions will act as a catalyst for adoption of UC as, in my opinion, mobile UC provides much more value than traditional desktop based UC and here's why.I'm not fully convinced that desktop based unified communications dramatically alters the way I work. Sure, it would be nice to have, might save me a bit of time, but isn't in my list of "must haves". One of the primary benefits of UC is it creates the ability to move information from one medium to another relatively easily. For example, with just a few mouse clicks, I can listen to a voice mail, reply to the caller through an email and then send that person an IM. Three separate modes of communications all integrated together. In concept, this sounds great, but its impact to alter my work process and make a dramatic difference in my productivity is limited as a standalone application. This is partially due to the fact that my communications and collaboration tools have been deployed in silos for so long that I've become proficient in using it that way, and so has almost every tech savvy worker out there today. In fact, many of the applications I use are consumer ones I've been using for years, adding to the familiarity of the "status quo". The bottom line is that any technically proficient user, of which there are more and more every day, can manually switch between applications and unify their own collaboration tools so the demand stays slow. The desktop based UC will grow but it will be its use as a platform for enhancing applications and business process that will drive it (see some of my other blogs).
When I'm on a mobile device, though, I'm in a much different work environment. Switching from one application to another on a mobile device such as a smart phone isn't nearly as simple as it is on a laptop. Moving information between applications is also more difficult, so the integration of applications provides move value. Additionally, the multimodality of UC is huge when users are mobile. When I'm in the office, I have a choice of whether I want to speak, email or send an instant message to someone (so I often do all three at the same time!). When I'm mobile, the mode of communications I'm in is dictated by my surrounding environment. If I'm in my car, I really shouldn't be typing on a keyboard (although everyone does), so speech becomes the preferred mode of communications. However, if you're in a crowded public area, or an area where you should be quiet (classroom, theater, etc), you really shouldn't be yelling into a phone, so text based communications is much more important. So the ability to use any communication mode with any user any time you need to is critical when mobile.
Mobility also raises the value proposition of integrated presence. At my desk, I really don't need to hover a mouse over a user's name in Word to see that the user is available. It's nice but I can just look at my corporate presence application. Time is a precious commodity when a user is mobile, so trying to reach users that aren't available is frustrating and time wasting--so having knowledge of the user's presence before you try and reach that person is critical. Integrated presence on a mobile device will allow us to maximize productivity in all those 10-30 minute time slots that we have every day. These are moments like when we're waiting for someone, between meetings or standing in line.
Anyone going through a unified communications evaluation or deployment right now should take a serious look at using the mobile workforce for a test bed for UC. Yankee Group research shows that over 40% of the workers today are mobile, and that number is on the rise, so there should be no shortage of users to test with. The mobile workers will get more functionality in more locations. Over the next year or two I fully expect mobile UC to be a core focus area for the UC vendors as well as the mobile vendors, and mobility will become a key driver for unified communications.
