UC's initial functionality was that of a presence/managed-availability portal. The newer term, UCC, indicates that the concept has moved on to embrace collaboration (the second C), and more recently the industry has been talking up the integration of real-time communications with mainstream business processes. (A few years ago the term "the real-time enterprise" was used for this integration development, but it’s gone out of fashion.) More recently Mobile UC has become a center stage requirement. Pull it all together and you end up with a scenario in which everything that's related to communications is unified, as visualized in the virtuous ellipse that Alcatel-Lucent depicts in Figure 1.
The UC scenario has evolved very rapidly, and there are indications that it has been too rapid for most IT departments to take on board. While the baseline benefits are considerable, the uptake has been relatively slow, a subject that’s been covered in various No Jitter articles. The linked article is worth reading because it also indicates the "Ready-Fire-Aim" approach to UC that some companies have adopted, i.e., UC is being implemented without a strategy and without a financial justification.
Businesses can't function without efficient communication services, but these are part of a much bigger picture that includes the Level 2/3 VPNs, network services on which the services and applications run, and the customer interaction center (also known as call center or contact center) that many enterprises employ. Enterprises rely on service providers (SPs) to provide those Level 2/3 managed network services, but given the size and complexity of the big picture, there is an obvious opportunity for SPs to extend their service portfolios and thereby offer both managed business communication services and managed customer interaction services.
Alcatel-Lucent's research indicates that the total service revenues of all three sectors of the managed services market — Business Networking, Business Communication and Customer Interaction — could reach 64 Billion euros (US$92 B) by 2012 (see Figure 2). The managed business communication sector (UC/UCC) has the highest growth (26.6%). These figures may change given the economic climate, but it’s clear that enterprises will be strapped for capital expenditure cash, nor can they afford long ROIs. What they want is a lower cost of ownership. Therefore managed services fit the bill, particularly those that come from carriers who have a proven track record outside the traditional "pure connectivity" network sector.
