Statler & Waldorf, From the Balcony

In case you don't remember, Statler and Waldorf are the two grumpy old men sitting in the balcony of the Muppet Theatre casting out words of wisdom. A few days ago, I was asked for my opinion about the marketing hype vs. real benefits of Unified Communications, which I do struggle with. First, there really isn't a clear definition of Unified Communications that I feel comfortable with and Eric Krapf made that pretty clear in Defining UC. So, for vendor speak or incentives to buy, I say pass until any vendor presents you with application-solution to your specific business problem that passes the finance guy's approval for a positive quantifiable return. The gene pool seems to be limited whenever it comes to accountability and that's the beef that finance has with the IT guys.

In case you don't remember, Statler and Waldorf are the two grumpy old men sitting in the balcony of the Muppet Theatre casting out words of wisdom.

A few days ago, I was asked for my opinion about the marketing hype vs. real benefits of Unified Communications, which I do struggle with. First, there really isn't a clear definition of Unified Communications that I feel comfortable with and Eric Krapf made that pretty clear in Defining UC. So, for vendor speak or incentives to buy, I say pass until any vendor presents you with application-solution to your specific business problem that passes the finance guy's approval for a positive quantifiable return. The gene pool seems to be limited whenever it comes to accountability and that's the beef that finance has with the IT guys.AOTMP released a survey earlier this year stating that the executives surveyed were not spending money on UC, at least this year. The hosted solutions I did review are still too pricey especially for the masses. Then, there's a strong tendency to cherry pick certain features/functions to create a patch-work solution, at least in the user's mind. For an industry that is so demanding of telephony change, I don't get why modems and fax machines haven't been obsoleted. UC does and should address more convergence issues for the masses but at wholesale prices that don't currently exist. I do believe the winners will be hosted solutions because they should be able to leverage the Internet with doing more for less. So UC-in-a-box may attract some wanting to build hardware centric empires. I want less gizmos in my office and more capability in the cloud, where most of those features mentioned, already are.

I think Statler and Waldorf would agree with me about some other observations. For years, as far back as I can remember, customers and users- not owners and executives, have always welcomed "taking the phone system down." This is where there's a great disparity. The bosses want no down time and the users welcome it. Then, early last year someone called me on my private line (it used to be) and was in disbelief when I answered the call. The woman continued on and couldn't get over the fact that I didn't pay an assistant to answer my line. I told her, "Maam, I have a simple working philosophy about answering the phone. Whenever anyone answers a phone call they have an opportunity."

So my definition of UC is "any tool that helps an employee not answer the phone to encounter a customer." Peter Drucker was right about a lot of things and "for treating everyone like a volunteer" especially in expecting telephone calls to be answered. Getting someone to answer the phone isn't passe, it's more like punishment. I guess the telephone is too personal and hiding behind a screen frees the individual spirit. But then, Maybe Statler and Waldorf are right, and they should cancel this (UC) show. But I'm just like them- I'll keep coming back until there's something better.