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Unified Communications Suffers An Identity Crisis: Page 2 of 3

Need a straightforward definition as to what UC is? Finneran, through his work with UC Strategies, defines it as “communications integrated to optimize business processes.” This is a nice, wide definition that covers a multitude of evils, he jokes.

Actually, according to a slightly earlier InformationWeek Research trending survey, confusion is not the only problem hindering wider enterprise adoption of UC. Two years ago, 30% of respondents reported having UC deployed. That number has now risen to 36%. Why so little traction? Today, as was the case two years ago, other projects just have a higher priority.

Meanwhile, expansionism has been an ongoing trend, the new report finds. From the idea of unified messaging, where a single mailbox would collect all of a user's non-real-time communications--including email, voice mail and fax--UC moved into the realm of real-time communications, providing a dashboard to initiate one-to-one audio and video connections and instant messaging chats.

The focus has now expanded further to include collaboration tools for conferencing via audio, video and the Web, as well as desktop sharing to help employees work together more effectively. The next iteration will add a set of social networking capabilities. “As the products have evolved, there are new attributes being continuously added to UC,” he says. “From the vendor’s standpoint, you change your marketing to highlight those. But my preference is to stick with the name we’ve got.”

And with the continuous evolution of UC functionality comes the identity crisis the term appears to be suffering from. “We’re moving to these tools, but the users don’t actually get it,” says Finneran “Of the drivers for UC among those that adopted it, the top two drivers are unified messaging and collaboration. The adoption of a full-blown UC client and people moving into this form of communications is not a natural event. People have to be led to it . . . if all they think of UC is unified messaging and collaboration, I think they’re missing the point.”