INFORMATIONWEEK REPORTS
Strategy: The UC Identity Crisis
UC Moving to Collaboration
Judging by our InformationWeek 2012 Unified Communications Survey, vendors looking to sell IT on unified communications systems aren't making as much headway as they'd like. In response, restless marketing executives are tacking on new capabilities and adding modifiers, like "collaboration" and "social business," in an effort to gain traction while simultaneously abandoning the "UC" terminology. Cisco has already purged the term. So what does that mean for enterprise IT teams that just want to get everyone talking?
First, expansionism has been an ongoing trend. 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 Web, and desktop sharing to help employees work together more effectively. The next iteration adds a set of social networking capabilities aimed at leveraging a shared knowledge base.
So is all this "UC" or "collaboration" or simply looking at the same capability from two different viewpoints? Certainly users can collaborate, but they are working with those collaboration tools through an integrated desktop client that is, essentially, a UC product. That same integrated UC client is also used to view presence status, initiate text chats and even make phone calls. (S4520212)
Sponsored By
Resource center from Mitel
The Total Economic Impact Of Mitel Virtual Solutions
This study from Forrester Research provides a framework to evaluate the TEI associated with deploying Mitel Virtual Solutions. It shows how one company achieved greater than 80% ROI and a payback period of less than 8 months with Mitel Virtual Solutions.
Unified Communications: Determining Which Solution is the Right Solution
Many businesses must evaluate the pros and cons when seeking a hosted versus a premises-based unified communications solution. While a premises-based solution offers more control, a hosted solution may allow businesses to focus on their core business without any downtime to enable business continuity. Download, “Choosing Between Premises-Based and hosted Communications Solutions” to understand the key areas to consider when choosing the right unified communications solution for your Organization.
Unified Communications Solutions: Improving Productivity and Collaboration
A fast-growing number of businesses are turning to virtual solutions with the goal of running a more efficient business. To further streamline processes and reduce costs, IT Professionals seek unified communications solutions that can be integrated with other virtual applications in their current data centers. Download, “Mitel Virtual Solutions” to learn how to bring unified communications to the virtual desktop.
About the sponsor
Mitel® (Nasdaq:MITL) (TSX:MNW) is a global provider of unified communications and collaboration (UCC) software, solutions and services that enable organizations to conduct business anywhere, over any medium with the device of their choice. Through a single cloud-ready software stream, Mitel's Freedom architecture provides customers in over 100 countries the flexibility and simplicity needed to support today's dynamic work environment. For more information, visit www.mitel.com.
