Unified communications can be lumped in with convergence. These are two subjects much talked about in the telecoms and IT industries at the time of writing but what does it mean? It’s basically about bringing different technologies together so that they work together and as one system. At the moment making calls, video conferencing, instant messaging, text messaging and other forms of communications are often separate technologies. Systems are emerging to bring these things together as business class systems. So, instead of using Skype or Yahoo for your instant messaging, a phone system for calls and yet another system for video conferencing it would be better to include this all in one application and where useful integrate with your web site and/or other applications such as a customer database.
Some of the ingredients of unified communications/convergence:
- Voice calls
- Voice call conferencing
- Instant messaging
- Video calls
- Texting (SMS)
- Multimedia messaging (MMS)
- Collaboration – view the internet together or control a remote PC
- Mobiles
- Call recording
- Call logging
- And so on …
Up to now larger corporate companies have been the main adopters of unified communications but this is beginning to filter down to the SME domain. Not all of the different parts of unified communications are useful to a particular business so it’s a case of having the things that are of benefit.
what else might be useful?
You might want call recording. In this age of accountability this is a must for some industries now. Call recording is also useful for training.
Call logging. This is a system that reports call usages so if you want to know how many inbound or outbound calls were made, where to or from, how many calls are unanswered, the average time to answer a call, the duration of calls etc then this could be very useful to you. Commonly used by call centres but good for any business that needs to analyse its call use. Another use might be to bill different companies using serviced accommodation for example.
Wireless (WiFi). Increasing in popularity and improving all the time, this mid-range wireless connectivity is a great way to connect laptops, PDAs, printers and other devices without having lots of cables everywhere. In the office, the airport, hotels or in the street it’s another way of staying connected often for free for the casual user.
What do you need? There is so much now that it is worth asking yourself what would be a benefit even if you have never heard of anything to meet your need because many times there is something that will do what you want.
