How Best to Enable Unified Communications (UC) for Small and Mid-sized Businesses (SMBs)?

In answer to Lillian's question, unified communications is a concept that includes hardware, software, and/or hosted services that are entirely removed from a customer's physical location.

Should a savvy SMB decision-maker pursue UC? Only if there are clear benefits to be gained from it. This means that it is important to understand how the organization is using communications today, and where the potential benefits may be found. Let's not be enamored with the technology alone, as technology should be viewed as a tool to achieve an objective.

If the SMB is looking to reduce, or see if they can reduce, their telecommunications costs, UC may offer some value. Using an IP enabled PBX with SIP trunking to lower usage costs when compared to traditional telephony circuits may be valuable. Using SIP trunking to establish a local presence via telephone numbers where the SMB has no physical facility can also be valuable. UC can provide advantages that may not have been previously available, but rather than asking if unified communications is the right solution for SMBs, it is useful to start with what we hope to achieve and then find the best solution including today's emerging technologies.

Lillian,

Unified communications is the ability to find all your media (communication) in one box/One area, versus multiple places. Your media or communication could consist of one or more of the following: Calls, Voice Mail, Fax, Chat, Call Recording, Video, etc... So instead of utilizing multiple servers, multiple software, and multiple solutions, and with nothing integrating, then the promise of Unified Communications is wrap all this in 1 area - 1 software - 1 system and make not only everything be INTEGRATED (for example, if you recorded a call, you can drag and drop it into Outlook to Email it out) or if you received a Fax - you can drag and drop it to someone else in the company -
I am a little biased - as I am the VP of Sales and MArketing for one of the leading companies that does that - www.zultys.com is an 8 year leader and innovator of Unified Communications - a Silicon Valley based company - that specializes in phone systems that unify all of what I just said, under 1 thin client (30 Kb or so) that works on PCs, MACs, even thin clients and does not require external servers to make it all happen. Is it right for you ? It could be. Speak to us or to a Zultys Reseller.

Pierre Kerbage
Pierre@Zultys.com
(512) 507-6375

In my opinion, what will set SMB's apart from their large competitors is response to their clients, customers and prospects. I have spent over 30 years in and around the Telecom and IT world in both sales and management capacities and found that MOST people never follow up! VOiP and UC will let them! Who would you rather do business with? A company that believes that you are important enough to immediately respond to or a company that does not seem to care? With find me/follow me and the ability to take every call, you are MILES ahead of a voicemail auto attendant and a voicemail sales staf!

Following up on the Lilian's question, I agree that UC will continue to be a mix of hardware and software. One key change that is coming is SIP technology. As the telecom industry has acknowledged for the last several years, SIP is the end of the traditional PBX. I bring up SIP becuase many SMB's are seeing and opportunity to move beyound traditional VoIP implementations and ultimately replace their hardware PBX implementations with SIP gateways and more ubiquitous open-systems servers running telecom software. In other words, SIP will allow SMB's to migrate away from dedicated PBX devices, radically changing the telecom hardware landscape.

At the same time, we are seeing SIP technology vendors quickly adding UC features to their SIP environments. For example, Microsoft Office Communications Server is growing into a core SIP engime for SMB's, combining many of the components we would expect to se in UC when it is connected to its Microsoft sister platform of Exchange, but all running as a software package on top of traditional WinTel server platforms rather than specialized telecom devices.

If you are looking seriously at UC today, I would strongly recommend it be part of an overall strategy including VoIP and SIP. Also, don't discount the networks. UC can easily driive the network needs of an SMB to 1gb at the desktop and beyond. Bottom LIne: Look at the big picture and plan for how UC will impact the overall infrastructure of your company.

Unified Communications is achievable today. With the advent of intelligent VoiceMails and Fax Servers the SMB has a platform to work with. The invention of CRM applications brings all points together. As a Telephony integrator we have been able to provide SMBs a true 360 degree look at who there customers are and what their interactions with that customer are.

The only issue with the SMB is the ability to define their work-flow in enough detail to customize the solution properly. This takes a good bit of time not only capturing the current environment, but also the environment desired. This is an issue with time and dollar resources. It is also a skill issue with the consultant. The Consultant must set expectations with the SMB about the scope of the work and the desired outcome.

This is not about a VOIP phone system. It is about compatible interlocking pieces that come together to solve real business needs for a customer.

SMB's are no different than enterprises. They both need a platform that enables communication between several disparate systems. I would strongly recommend an open platform to achieve this.

From a hardware perspective, a solid communications solution is mandatory. Companies need to be careful to choose the proper voice platform to enable communications as voice is the cornerstone of of a unified communications implementation. Do not choose a proprietary system; many systems claim they are open but do not work with other manufacturer's switches or routers.

Many open source options are tempting but most have such a small install base that it's hard to find enough people, internally or externally, that have the proper expertise to adequately support organizations. Because of a small base, there may not be support or documented solutions for add-on applications such as video or IM.

What I'm seeing in the market is seismic shift to SIP. SIP (Session Initiated Protocol) is the enabling technology that most communication systems are using. SIP integrates voice, IM, video, and presence. The problem is that SIP is just like many standards... manufacturers translate SIP in their own way. There are charts available that outline how SIP-compliant manufacturers are. Few, if any are 100% compliant, but they should be well over 80% compliant.

Build your base infrastructure using open standards and carefully choose your projects one at a time to build a solid communications system that's truly unified.

Forgive the self-serving reply. We are having great success with SMB's who are deploying UC. One of the biggest barriers to successful UC deployment is LAN readiness. The Phybridge UniPhyer allows a SMB to easily deploy the UC solution of their choice with no LAN upgrades. The Phybridge UniPhyer leverages the existing telco cable within the SMB to instantly provide PoE and signaling over Single Pair cable. The result is a UC solution that installs immediately, at a lower cost and with built-in resiliency. Visit www.phybridge.com for more details. We are currently working with over 100 North American VARs.

I think that taking stock of what you have is a starting point, not just hardware but also software, many applications already have some if many features of UC already available, and by just getting these working can start the process with limited outlay.
Full UC could be seen as something else that does need some significant investment, and although there could be huge benefits, the ROI needs to be understood.

As for hardware and software, think carefully about mixing and matching, and explore all the functionality of your core provider, often Microsoft, since there could be 90% of what you want there but the Telco will want to sell your their solution that does 80% of what you already have resulting in duplicate investment and having to patch things together.

Also do think about the need for all of this to be in house, often a hosted solution can give you a chance to dip a toe in the water and see how it really does work and then if proved to be the right thing either continue with a hosted solution or start an in house project.

The final word of warning is that even putting UC in will not get people using it as I have seen from a £250K project for a 250 user company and only 5 people used UC to it’s full capacity, the rest liked to work the way always have done, a good educational process is mandatory and will help the deployment become a success, often saving the cost of the implementation within a 12 month period.

From a IP telephony set perspective and UC must the set itself meet certain standards for UC?