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Unified communications may be described as the unification of presence, real-time com- munications and near-real-time communications into a single user experience.

This potentially includes the integration of fixed and mobile voice, Short Message Services (SMS), voice-mail, fax, audio, video and Web conferencing, e-mail, instant messaging (IM), Voice over IP (VoIP), business applications and ”whiteboarding”, into a single environment, offering the user a more complete but simpler and more effective experience. It also supports accessibility based on the preferred method, location of the recipient and its availability, in real time.

• How it works

Based on IP technology and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), a single address reaches several devices simultaneously or intelligently routes voice and data messages to the best suited communication device based on a user’s profile. For example, unified communi- cations technology could allow a user to seamlessly collaborate with another person on a project, even if the two users are in separate locations. The user could quickly locate the necessary person by accessing an interactive directory, engage in a text messaging session, and then escalate the session to a voice call, or even a video call within minutes. Unified communications could enable that worker to access a real-time list of available expert colleagues, then make a call that would reach the necessary person, enabling the employee to answer the customer faster, and eliminating rounds of back-and-forth emails and phone-tag.

• Why it’s emerging

With an increasingly mobile workforce, businesses are rarely centralized in one lo- cation. A typical communications challenge facing many organizations is an inability to reach co-workers reliably on the first try. Even though communication tools have pro- liferated, the fact that employees are become increasingly mobile makes collaborating with co-workers more difficult by the day. In addition, according to [PB07], the average organization is using over six different types of communication and five communication applications. Even though more tools should lead to easier co-worker access, if the de- vices are not properly integrated the net effect can be counterproductive. These internal communication obstacles lead to missed deadlines and critical delays over time, and it has real economic impact. [ST08]

• Benefits

The benefits of UC become particularly attractive as mobile work forces grow com- mon. With unified communications, organizations improve employee mobility, enhance workforce collaboration and productivity among employees, customers and suppliers, and reduce costs by speeding decision-making, reducing travel expenses and improving client retention and satisfaction. In addition, future plans for Unified Communications applica- tions strongly suggest that this technology will not only bring operational efficiencies but also provide a real source of competitive advantage in the long run. [Inc06]

• Mobile Unified Communications

Mobile unified communications is a special case because up until recently, mobile communications for most users has been largely independent infrastructure, services and devices provided by licensed mobile operators or carriers. These large networks and systems have been isolated from the enterprise, connected only by the public telephone network.

As employees roam on and off the office, they are demanding consistent capabilities for making phone calls, sending text and email messages, and accessing contact lists and unified message inboxes. More recently, heightened competition in mobile email services and innovation in devices have stimulated market demand for better display, battery, user interface, third-party software integrations and faster, more secure and lower cost data capabilities to both the campus Wi-Fi network and the mobile operator’s network.

The advent of quickly proliferating high-speed Wi-Fi networks, 3G cellular capabil- ities and Smartphones, are a huge motivator underlying mobile unified communications. Wi-Fi devices in the campus have several advantages since they leverage the existing enterprise-managed Wi-Fi environment and don’t attract monthly bills from mobile oper- ators. Dual mode Wi-Fi also enables executives and salespeople to participate in nomadic work-at-home or work-at-hotel calls and conferences over IP networks, where cellular coverage might be too expensive due to roaming, where the signal strength is low, or where the participants or topic require more stable, quiet or private communications.

With mobile unified communications the customer satisfaction is higher. Since em- ployees are more accessible, they spend less time waiting and have more time to do their jobs, resulting in shorter cycle times. [BT07] [Con06] [Inc06]

• Challenges

Device interoperability issues affect the cost of user training and limit feature inter- actions to only a subset of target users, since not all devices support the same operating system and third-party development programs. This results in lack of interoperability, increasing support costs and reducing feature transparency across the devices.

In addition, extending enterprise telephony features into the mobile environment as part of a mobile unified communications solution requires, for most implementations, a degree of integration with the enterprise IP PBX system. Many enterprises are not homo- geneous in their choice of telephony brands, by virtue of different strategies over time, mergers and acquisitions, and long life-cycles of original purchases. Thus the complexity of integrating multiple approaches to mobile unified communications may also contribute significantly to higher implementation costs. [BT07]