Movement is Key

There is a beautiful Sanskrit couplet (sloka) that says

the knowledge that only resides in the book, and the wealth that is with someone

else, have no value because they cannot be used when needed. As businesses

compete more and more on knowledge, there cannot be a better time to look back

at the wisdom of our great seers as they so aptly articulate todays

challenges.

Consider this. Organizations today spend a significant part of

their capital expenditure (and increasingly operational expenditure) on building

world-class IT systems. In India, many of the new generation companies benchmark

against the best in their class globally. They go all out to collect

information, clean it, process it in all ways possible, and by the time they are

able to act on that, it is already outdated!

There was one joke doing the rounds about software a few days

back: if it works fine, it is probably outdated. Many now apply the same to

information. If the information is part of a structured database, probably it is

outdated.

We are not exaggerating. Take a common example. When you want

someone to immediately contact you because you want to buy insurance and you

send an SMS to a short-code advertised by the insurance provider concerned,

there is often no response for a week, or more. But when you are least

interested, you get five calls a day asking you to buy an insurance policy!

In the first case, the company lost business because the people

who should have been able to access that information as soon as you sent the SMS

request had no access till a human intervention put them to the structured

database. And by the time that task was completed, you have already got your

policy. If someone calls you, you are not interested. In fact, as the growing

demand for Do Not Call shows, you are probably irritated. That is loss of

goodwill. So the company loses on both fronts.

If only information would have moved smoothly to the person who

required it most: the sales guy in the insurance company or an agent!

To paraphrase the teaching of the Sanskrit sloka, the

information that remains in a static database has no value because it cannot be

used when needed.

This is not a very uncommon problem. But it is just surprising

how many enterprises actually take it the way it is: a fundamental problem.

Reducing Human Latency



In the real world scenario, when one needs to contact a colleague, she needs
to switch from the application shes working in to an address book and then to

a device (like a telephone) or a different application (such as email).

Thereafter, she would look up her phone extension and give them a call, only to

be directed to their voicemail. After leaving a message, she finds their mobile

phone numbers and leaves a second message and next, sends an email. While from

the organizations perspective, IT struggles to operate an unwieldy mix of

disconnected systems: a PBX system for phone calls, a messaging system for voice

mail, a solution for email, a system for instant messaging and more.

Technologically, there is no breakthrough to make them smoothly

work with each other. The unified communication/intelligent communication

applications available today do that effectively.

"The latency that comes due to delayed human response to

business process alerts is well addressed by the communication enabled business

processes," says Vivek Porwal, head, Unified Communication Business Unit,

Avaya GlobalConnect.

The idea of intelligent communication is to use communication to

connect several processes and integrate infrastructure to make business

processes more efficient and eliminate "human latency" and help

companies raise productivity and respond more rapidly to changing business

conditions.

Since this is one of the biggest business challenges facing

enterprises, this has become a major driver for smarter enterprises. Smart CIOs

are demanding that they have a solution for this from their IT vendors. Not

surprisingly, Microsoft, which dominates the office productivity space has taken

it seriously and has got into a global alliance with Nortel to jointly offer

solutions.

Defining Intelligent Communication



Intelligent Communication or Unified Communication (UC) encompasses all
forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions,

controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes. This

includes any enterprise informational or transactional application process that

emulates a human user and uses a single, content-independent personal messaging

channel (mailbox) for contact access.

	"The latency that comes due to delayed human response to business process alerts is well addressed by the communication enabled business processes"
	Vivek Porwal, head, Unified Communication Business Unit, Avaya GlobalConnect

A June 2006 Gartner report clearly points out that the UC market

is maturing rapidly, even though the overall market remains at an early stage

and the adoption of converged solutions remains low. Currently, over 90% of

enterprises that are converging data and voice are on IP networks but in the

next 2-3 years, the transition will happen from IP-based networks. Organizations

will also look at integrating the email infrastructure.

While the PBX infrastructure in India is close to $290 mn,

eventually the market will move towards IP-based infrastructure, which is close

to a $108 mn market. Clearly the Indian market is on the radar of most UC

players, and, given the stiff competition in the UC market, most have prepared a

comprehensive business strategy based on specific needs of the different

verticals.

Banking on its recent major acquisitions like Audium, Meteros

and Webex, the networking equipment manufacturer, Cisco, is looking to increase

its UC business by over 40% in India, a major English daily reported recently.

The company has even identified verticals for achieving this growth.

Avaya Global Connect, that includes UC as part of Intelligent

Communication, has opened a customer studio in Mumbai to showcase its products

apart from providing flexible solutions for every vertical and domain expertise

and specific teams to handle specific verticals.

"The potential for the growth of UC is high in India and

with better telecom infrastructure, high bandwidth connectivity through MPLS,

metro Ethernet and broadband, and favorable regulations, enterprise adoption of

UC will soon be on an upward swing," says Sukhvinder Ahuja, Microsoft

Business leader, Nortel India.

Gaining Momentum



As more and more companies are stepping up initiatives to go global, the
competitive landscape is expected to become much more intense and with it the

need for continuous innovation. "There will be rapid acceleration of

business demand capabilities that allow people to communicate and collaborate

across the globe in real time, in the context of business problem or opportunity

or discussion," says Chetan Yardi, country manager, Lotus, SWG IBM India.

UC provides enterprises and their users with faster and quicker

methods of effective communication; thereby enabling enterprises to make

effective decisionssaving time, valuable human resources and increasing

productivity. "While the use of converged communication solutions is

clearly growing, this technology is still in its early stages. However, by using

converged communication solutions, organizations are building the foundation for

a next-generation communication world of potential value-added applications and

collaboration tools," adds Mohit Rampal, country manager, 3Com.

The primary value of using converged IP communications is that

it provides an enterprise-class telephony solution that reduces cost of

ownership and at the same time increasing user productivity with collaboration

tools and enabling business efficiency for todays fast-growing organizations.

Enhancing Employee Productivity



Today any information worker is exposed to several modes of communication
like email, fax, voicemail, telephone, and mobile phone. On the other hand, IT

decision makers have so far been investing in two parallel communication

infrastructures: voice communications through PBXs and email communications

through PCs. Both investments have so far delivered significant business value

to their organizations although this is often fragmented, comprising multiple

applications and hardware from different vendors, and therefore time consuming

and inefficient for employees to use, and also expensive for IT departments

(that must deploy, manage, and update the systems).

Therefore, most market players agree that UC reduces downtime by

letting users reach the right person at the right time through their preferred

mode of contact. This goes way beyond slashing hold times or staying clear of

voice mail. This means organizing information faster and getting that

information to the right person in a usable format when the recipient needs it

most. For instance, the Mumbai-based Chembur Sahkari bank faced the problem of

not being able to dissipate and monitor information or circulars from the RBI to

all its branches from a central location. To increase collaboration in its

working environment, the bank decided to create a new solution based on

Microsoft Office System 2007. The proposed system was to be developed using the

features of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 for developing the portal

connecting the head office, and all the branches managing operations and the

data centrally from the head office.

UC allows employees to integrate their devices giving the

flexibility to choose the device and delivery of choice, and if integrated with

mail messaging services, the user dials up his mailbox and requests to have his

mails read out to him, and formulates his reply accordingly. "Organizations

should ideally look at a three year plan, identify their immediate needs and

integrate their other needs to enable them to improve their business

processes," says Ahuja of Nortel.

Converged IP communication has now gone to the next level,

beyond VoIP and first generation IP telephony deployments. It is more than just

a basic dial tone; as business advantages are driven by increased productivity

and enhanced collaboration among employees, customers, and partners. These

benefits result from cutting-edge IP-based applications. Unified messaging

offers IP telephony users voice mail/email/fax integration and find me

capabilities. Advanced collaborative applications, such as instant messaging,

presence, and highly scalable audio conferencing capabilities, save time and

effort. IP contact centers help drive customer satisfaction and business

revenues. IP telephony solutions built on open architectures and industry

standards, such as SIP also provide the most flexibility to connect to the

third-party applications the business requires.

Pitching for software-based UC, Vibhu Ranjan, director, UC,

Microsoft India says "the arrival of softwarebased UC is changing the

way enterprises use the convergence of VoIP telephony, email, instant messaging,

mobile communications, and audio/video Web conferencing to deliver a superior

communications platform". Unified communications actually helps information

workers to be in control of their communication thus enabling teams to work

together in real time and increase personal productivity.

Avaya Global Connect, a proponent of Intelligent Communications,

of which UC is a part, believes it makes available to employees all business

communication tools with full features wherever they are and whichever device

they have access to. It keeps people in sync, enabling them to share information

quickly and easily, allows teams to work together from distributed offices,

while on the move, and thereby hastens business decisions. In India, companies

like Marico, Godrej and NIIT Technologies have deployed Microsofts Unified

Communications and have increased employee productivity and efficiency and

reduced overall costs, claims Ranjan.

The Microsoft-Nortel alliance worked with the Mumbai

International airport on their new international airport facility to converge

their telephony and email, resulting in availability and granularity across the

new facility, thus providing a seamless user-friendly experience for their

customers.

Stuti Das



stutid@cybermedia.co.in