The business drivers for UC are well known and organisations are already seeing the benefits of UC technologies within their organisation. But as CIOs and IT managers are seeing more demand for UC services, they aren’t seeing many options for UC advice and business case development. Also many organisations are tainted by unsuccessful past implementations which never realized their objectives and lead to under utilization of the existing investments made.

Whether embarking on a new UC initiative or re-vitalizing an existing implementation, organisations will require the following to realize the success of their investment and plans: a Strategic Approach , Impartial Consultation , and Industry Experience .

A Strategic Approach

Companies are not only realizing the need for UC but now understanding that UC has become strategic IT initiative. With the convergence of voice, video and data to one network, and ultimately the convergence of UC applications to the desktop, UC has a major impact on IT planning but also a major impact on end users and their daily workflow. As a result, a comprehensive and strategic approach is required.

This approach is two fold, first looking at UC from the end user perspective and evaluating how employees need and/or would like to communicate as well as understanding the right technologies to apply based on the profile and level of the employee. Second is evaluating the existing network and applications in use and putting a business plan in place to expand or change the existing IT infrastructure. Ultimately, developing this type of strategy and business planning is required to have a successful UC rollout.

Strategy First, Technology Second

UC can be defined just by its technology elements (see our UC Defined white paper, for more information on UC definitions). Each UC technology element in of itself is a complex solution: VoIP, Presence, Video Conferencing, Telepresence, Web and Audio Conferencing and Unified Messaging. Determining the right solution, at least initially, is not about the technical capabilities of a particular product but aligning technologies to objectives and end user work flow. With a UC strategy first, determining technology requirements and product evaluation becomes straight forward.

Impartial Advice

The collaboration and UC industry is dramatically changing but the way the technology and its product are sold has remained the same. Today, the collaboration “experts” and the “solution providers” are mainly the sales consultants of the equipment manufacturers or resellers. Organisations don’t have many options when it comes to getting experienced, impartial advice on how to implement or build a UC strategy. Mostly organisations are getting a single vendor and single technology solution. UC is an environment where multiple technologies and multiple vendors need to be implemented and integrated, therefore requiring an initial impartial view.

Experience

All of the C2C Analysts have at least 15 years of experience in at least one or more of the UC elements. As a result of our specific experience, we are able to cut through the vendor hype and provide realistic views of UC implementations. Ultimately using our experience, we are able to provide clients with a clear and concise UC roadmap that fits within their IT budget and meets the overall business objectives.