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UC:The Way Forward
Getting your current infrastructure ready, managing integration issues, and lots of technologies and innovations in UC were discussed in this CIO round table
Saturday, July 04, 2009
PCQuest organized a round table discussion in Mumbai with a few key CIOs over
breakfast. agenda: to understand the way forward with Unified Communication. We
wanted to identify key issues that are hampering enterprise productivity and how
can UC be the answer. The event kicked off with a briefing on enterprise
communications strategies by the PCQuest Editor, wherein highlighted how digital
communication has gained relevance post the slowdown, because most organizations
have slashed their travel budgets. It therefore made sense for CIOs to enhance
their enterprise communications infrastructure, and move to unified one. The
attendees were Ali Mahadik, Sr. Manager - IT, PAM Pharmaceutical & Allied
Machinery; Atul Kumar, President - ET and A, Ispat India; Rajiv Sharaf, Addl
VP-IT, Reliance Energy; Fariborz P. Zaigar AM-IT, Rallis India, Zoeb Adenwala
CIO (Global), Essel Propack, J Ramesh, GM—IT, Mirc Electronics
UC: Trends & Innovations
The next session was by Kiran Kumar, Practice Head-UC from Wipro, who provided a
complete walk-through of the latest trends and innovations in Unified
Communication. Most CIOs today have a good understanding of IP based
communication, IP telephony, etc, said Kiran. That's why he stressed on some of
the essential components of a UC solution. Presented here are the key ones.
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Goodbye multiple PBXs, Hello IP PBX
The benefit having a UC infrastructure is that you don't require a new PBX for
every new site or office you setup. This is possible thanks to IP PBXs. They
also help you scale up. You might have 4-5 new sites today, but tomorrow you
could add more, and even have global presence. In such a case, having a central
IP PBX will ensure that all your users register to it. Quoting the example of
Infosys, Kiran said that the organization has around 50K IP phones registering
into a single PBX. This makes it easy to manage from one central location. Plus,
the same PBX has been mirrored across other locations for high-availability. In
case the main PBX fails, the mirrored one takes over seamlessly.
Smarphones as your telephone extension
End points are another key element of UC. This comprises of IP hard phones,
wireless IP phones, and softphones. Now, even hand held devices with WiFi are
becoming end-points, because softphones have been created for them. So a Nokia
smartphone or a Blackberry could become an extension of your PBX. You could use
your smartphone as your telephone extension without having to dial into the GSM
network. Not only that, but the mobile client will also allow users to access
their corporate directory search, find out the 'presence' of another user, see
the conferences and meetings lined up for him, etc all over GPRS. One point to
note here is that GPRS and GSM won't work together, i.e. if a user finds another
person from the corporate directory and clicks on call, then that call would be
made through GSM. Possibly once 3G kicks in, even this call would be made over
IP, and not GSM.
'Read' your Voice Mail
Seeing voice mail in your email box is another feature of UC. Earlier, a user
would have to listen to all voice mails serially, as a result of which voice
mail didn't really gain popularity. By integrating it with email, users can see
all voice mail messages in one go, and choose to listen to more important ones.
The same functionality is available on handhelds as well.
Single Number Reach
This is especially meant for those sales guys who're never on their seat. With
this, whenever a customer calls, both the desk phone and mobile phone of the
sales person ring. The sales guy could seamlessly disconnect the call on one
phone and shift to the other. The PBX will automatically transfer the call. This
feature is device independent. A thing to note here is that when the call goes
on the mobile phone, it's the PBX that automatically dials out to it. So the
organization has to decide between higher communication cost and the convenience
of having mobility.
UC is the logical way forward
What followed Kiran's presentation was a very animated discussion amongst the
six CIOs who were present in the round table. Several key aspects emerged from
the discussion.
While everyone agreed that a UC infrastructure was the logical way forward,
there was a lot of debate over the approach. One thought was that since a
unified communications infrastructure would combine telecom and data networks,
there would be one single type of cabling within the premise. This would require
lesser manpower to deploy or even manage it later. “Whether or not UC can reduce
the infrastructure management and deployment is still a debatable issue”, said Atul Kumar, President, ET & A, Ispat Industries. He said that the cost of
upgrading the infrastructure itself to be UC ready is significant. So you have
to draw a balance between continuing with your existing infrastructure for
communication, or upgrading to UC. He said that before you can even dream of
having UC, you first have to look at your desktop integration; and then ensure
that the application and network architectures are in place. Then, the real time
applications have to be in place. According to Atul, IP Telephony is not even
10% of UC. There's much more to it than that, and many of applications used in
UC, like video conferencing are time sensitive. Therefore, the network must be
ready to support such real-time applications.
Kiran agreed with this and said that many customers look at an integrated
infrastructure when they come up with a new setup. They try and ensure that this
can inter-operate with their existing infrastructure, so that users can
seamlessly talk to each other. Later, as the system is up for renewal, the
customer decides whether to increase the IP penetration into the setup or not.
Clearly understand your requirement
UC is not 'one size fits all'. Therefore it's important that CIOs have a clear
understanding of what they'd like to achieve with UC. It has to deliver what the
organization wants. “Many times, organizations don't know what they want unless
you tell them that this is also a possible route.” said Atul.
Another valid point was raised by Rajeev Sharaf, Addl VP -IT, Reliance
Infrastructure. He said that STD calls today are so cheap that an organization
may not get the motivation to spend so much on UC. Zoeb Adenwala, Global CIO
Essel Propack also said that UC is a call of every organization, and depends
upon the usage. “But it's difficult to justify spending on UC”, he said. In
today's world (read economic slowdown affected world), most CEOs say, shoot down
projects that don't give ROI in less then 3 months, or have a large capex
requirement. 'In UC types of projects, it's very difficult to quantify the
benefits', he added. And therefore they take a backseat.
How to build the case for it?
How do you justify a move to UC? Moreover, added Rajeev, that after having taken
this solution, after 3-4 years, you have to go for a version upgrade. This
increases cost, whereas a traditional PBX runs for 15 years, which is what
appeals more to the CEO. How do you therefore justify spending on UC?
The answer here is that it depends how clearly the requirement has been
defined? What's the scope of work involved? This clarity is very important to
justify UC. Another point raised by Anil Chopra, Editor PCQuest was that “in
order to get the RoI, the users have to be made to understand the real value of
UC”. Today, nobody questions the RoI for Email, he said. Because everyone
realizes its importance. The same sort of justification has to be made for UC.
To this, Kiran added that “you have to identify the small thing that can
change the way you work, instead of thinking of fancy things”. Atul also agreed
that UC has become more of a need, but one should be able to touch and feel its
benefits. “How will my life be simpler with UC?”, he said. Today if there's a
major problem with your DataCenter, you can be informed about it. You don't have
to physically go to the data center to fix it. So while this might have made you
a 24x7 employee, at least it let's you do things remotely. UC will only enhance
this sort of working. Page(s) 1
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