For those who know me, I am usually considered to be a bit of a cynic and rarely jump on the bandwagon of new technology unless I can see a very clear return on investment for my clients.
With this in mind, I was thinking back to some early IP Telephony vendor presentations. Remember when vendors were trying to justify IP-based systems because you could run apps on the desk phones? The so-called killer app was actually running apps on the phones! I believe a few narrow use cases emerged for this circa 2005 such as ordering pizza from a hotel room, or another one pitched for K-12 that allowed security camera video to be viewed on a phone.
These narrow market use cases had very limited success, and it wasn't long before vendors had moved on to other justifications for IP Telephony systems; I recall Business Continuity being one of these. This is still a significant selling factor for many organizations. So, end users (and their consultants) had to sift through vendor marketing to determine what might have true value to their organization as opposed to trends or limited-use applications. IP Telephony won as a platform with superior capabilities, rather than as a set of applications with specific business value.
Fast forward to today. We all agree that vendors must create new products with value in order to be successful in the market and increase revenues/profit. End users still have the same challenge to determine that specific value to their own organization. Let's look at Unified Communications and Collaboration technology categories through this approach to determine how they fit.
Unified Communications (With or Without Collaboration)
UC&C (or just UC or whatever the popular name is today) has been on the market for quite some time. Many of the components of UC&C, such as video and conferencing, have existed as standalone technology for over 20 years. Although recently published market data shows increased sales and adoption for UC&C, I wonder how much of this is based on platform decisions vs. actual use case analysis. For those of you old enough to remember, voicemail as a platform had a very long adoption cycle. UC&C appears to be following a similar pattern, where we are seeing an increase in procurement without business case/ROI analysis.
However, most of my clients were able to determine UC value for only limited parts of their organization. These tended to be for role-based groups (i.e. large field or customer service departments). In other cases, we were able to use presence to replace busy lamp fields (BLF) and avoid purchasing sidecars or phones with lots of buttons. I have also seen significant interest in Single Number Reach recently for customer-facing personnel. This is a technology that has existed since at least 2001 (Avaya Extension to Cellular).
In general, many of my clients purchase limited UC elements and licenses rather than the full package (highest tier). In large part, this is due to the initial and ongoing support costs without seeing the requisite business value.
So What Does This Mean?
I think that as organizations implement UC&C tools, we'll see a number of sub-markets continue to develop. Some will be focused on Communication Enabled Business Processes (CEBP) while others will focus on lowering the cost of the technology. Others will continue to use small portions of the UC&C bundle.
We know that CEBP requires significant process change and support from senior managers. Changing the culture of an organization is typically a much more difficult endeavor than simply implementing a new technology platform. So with this said, I believe that we will continue to see UC&C become a platform decision. As TCO decreases, adoption will increase. I do not believe that the promise of UC&C as a paradigm shift in the way organizations do business will soon be realized.
What do you think?
My next article will discuss Cloud and Analytics through a similar lens of vendor hype vs. value to the end user organization.
The Society of Communications Technology Consultants (SCTC) is an international organization of independent information and communication technology (ICT) professionals serving clients in all business sectors and government worldwide
