Unified Communications: Risks and Rewards A CIO Round Table

Saturday, July 04, 2009

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As the world gears up to face fresh challenges to economy, all the large organizations cutting across verticals are going through a paradigm shift in how and through what means do they conduct their businesses. Enough is being debated over why, when, where and how companies should cut costs but quite refreshingly, they do not see new technologies as the first budget head that requires a trimming. This was one of the prime findings when PCQuest alongwith its partners Datacraft and Cisco, stepped out in Delhi at The Park in Connaught Place to discuss with CIOs of some of the prime organizations in India, on how they plan to unify multiple channels of communication across their organizations.

The discussion started with PCQuest Editor, Anil Chopra, dwelling on a recent survey that PCQuest conducted to find out Unified Communication strategies of 60+ key IT decision makers across India. It covered companies across verticals: manufacturing, ITeS, BFSI, Pharma, government, media & entertainment, etc with annual turnovers varying from 100 to 5,000+ crores. One issue that came out boldly was that all organizations face travel budget crunch in varying degrees. In fact, a quarter of those surveyed, faced cuts upto 50% from the previous budgets. But this does not mean that business meetings have been cut down. There is now an extended reliance on various communication channels available: audio and video conferencing, Instant Messaging, text and voice messages, VoIP, data exchange, email, landline and mobile calls, fascimile, etc. Another related finding was the satisfaction levels with these different communication channels and how effectively are people able to reach the person they intend to. We really touched the sensitive spot here as the satisfied and dissatisfied people were equal in number. Most CIOs felt that there is increased pressure in managing multiple communication channels and a key issue faced was in reaching the right person at the right time. Another key finding was that IP telephony was amongst the most popular communication technologies already deployed by companies and they feel that deploying Unified Communication (UC) in future is the logical way forward and this is what most people actually have plans for deployment in future. At the event, most CIOs supported the view but felt legal restrictions were coming in the way of seamless connectivity IP-based and non IP-based communication channels.

Anil Chopra, Editor, PCQuest talked about the Unified Communications scenario across India	Nagi K, GM, Datacraft Asia discussed steps organizations should take to make their UC solutions future-proof.
Minhaj Zia, Head – UC Cisco India & SAARC dwelled on the technical aspects of a UC deployment.	Rahul Bhatia, Regional Sales Manager – North, Cisco Capital explained the company's financial assistance policies

Moving on, Nagi K from Datacraft Asia presented on how an organization could make its UC solution more future-proof. He started off with a brief background on Datacraft's role as an implementation partner for Cisco. He touched upon the need to have the 'right' implementation partner for UC deployments, one that has years of experience and global expertise of having deployed UC for all types of industries. He stated that most CIOs today want to cut costs from executing business processes and systems and instead use that money to fund people. Legacy systems still lying with companies act as an impediment to this objective so adopting the latest cutting-edge technologies is the only panacea. Companies should not just focus on short term goals but look at all possible opportunities to gain over competition. One of these could be in enabling your workforce to work from anytime, anywhere, maybe even home. A fine balance is required to be maintained across systems to successfully implement such a vision. For instance, data security is critical if say 100 people work from 100 homes and access the same resources at the same time. You need to carefully evaluate the costs incurred in adding applications to your existing systems to achieve this goal, as this is one area that CIOs have to carefully trudge. A good strategy here would be to convert capex into opex through the use of hosted UC solutions. If you compare the gains made through the use of UC in the long run, you'll find that the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) has actually reduced.

Minhaj Zia, Head – UC Cisco India & SAARC added on to the technical aspects of a UC deployment. Some of the common challenges faced by organizations in moving from TDM to IP-based communications are in choosing the right PBX, codec and getting protocols to talk to each other. Cisco offers various collaboration tools for employees, partners, customers and business leaders that let companies save money over the long run and allow businesses to grow by unlocking the true employee potential, build robust communication bridges with customers and leap frog competition. Cisco is already a pioneer in video conferencing of different hues: from low-res desktop to high-res video conferencing and TelePresence, the ultimate experience in life-like teleconferencing. Cisco and its partners deliver collaboration via whatever model that best suits a customers needs: from On Premise CPE (customer premises equipment) to Managed CPEs to Hosted Communication Solutions that go all the way upto 'On Demand' solutions such as SaaS. One of the revelations from the conference was Cisco's latest venture into funding new equipment purchases by organizations, through its susbsidiary, Cisco Capital. The company's Regional Sales Manager – North, Rahul Bhatia explained the financial logic on which Cisco Capital works and how it makes life easy for corporates who want the latest in technology but want financial support.

Cisco Capital is a captive finance company of Cisco Systems and was incorporated in the US in 1996 and the APAC & Japan in 1999. It offers different leasing options: from a Finance or Capital lease to Operating Lease, to organizations, to buy or lease for specific periods and sell a product back to Cisco Capital.

Meant to fund only technology, the company offers best interest rates and even provides funding for equipment maintenance programs. Such finance options gel well with the theme of converting costs from Capex to Opex that is the focus of most organizations in these uncertain times.

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