With Rick McCharles, president and founder of RIC Services, a Toronto-area consultancy on unified communications and other topics.

Question: What is your vision of unified communications?
McCharles: I view unified communications as an architecture, not as a single product or application. It is an architecture with many components, including voice mail, unified messaging, business processes and good old VoIP and analog telephone. These all are potentially part of a unified communications system. With Microsoft's entrance last year with OCS, suddenly unified communications took on a totally different meaning in the marketplace.

Question: What impact did Microsoft's strong push in unified communications have?
McCharles: A lot of people, because of Microsoft's marketing engine, have come to know unified communications as a desktop client with the presence status of people they are trying to contact. That is only a small part of a unified communication system … I would say [Microsoft] raised awareness about unified communications and their entrance into the market made some people understand that unified communications is strategic and is going to help them from a competitive and customer service perspective. So on one hand it raised awareness. On the other hand, in many organizations it has caused them to pause. Perhaps they had embarked on the journey with Cisco, Nortel, Avaya or others. Microsoft's entry caused them to pause and question what they are doing going forward.

Question: Microsoft certainly always shakes things up, doesn't it?
McCharles: In fact, what I observed was many manufacturers suddenly renamed their product line from VoIP [related names] to unified communications when there was no difference in the products. They needed to be in the unified communications game. I think Microsoft played a big part in that. It's a pet peeve of mind. I've created my own definition: Unified communications is an evolving communications architecture which automates and unifies all forms of human and device communications in context and with a common experience. Its purpose is to optimize business processes and enhance human communications by reducing latency, managing flows and eliminating device and media dependencies. It is not IP telephone, not unified messaging. It is not any of those things. To say you are implementing unified communications is as meaningless as saying you are implementing information technology.

Question: What is unified communications made up of?
McCharles: In my view, there are two main areas: the plumbing and the organization.

Question: Okay. What does the plumbing consist of?
McCharles: When you talk about the plumbing, you are talking about infrastructure components. Everything that has to do with unified communications is completely dependent on the underlying infrastructure. So if any part is Swiss cheese, so will be your unified communications system. It will be full of holes. Infrastructure includes all aspects of networks. Is it properly segmented? Is it secure? Do you have the required redundancy? Do you have congestion? You need a robust network infrastructure.

Besides the physical network come things like power, computer rooms, standby power, wiring closets. These are all physical things that need to be solid. The anchor application in unified communications is voice. So, therefore the networks need to be architected for voice because voice is the most demanding. It's real time. Voice is the anchor application, the one most widely used. In fact, voice is less tolerant of packet loss and delay than video is. If video packets are slightly delayed, there may be a little jitter. But if you miss packets of voice, it may be enough to miss a significant piece of the conversation. I consider voice the network canary. My point with all of this … is that you need a solid physical infrastructure. If the physical infrastructure is at the point at which it solidly supports voice, it will solidly support all the other elements of unified communications.

Question: What must happen on the organizational level?
McCharles: You need sponsorship. This is obvious stuff. You need executive sponsorship and you need a solid business plan. You cannot implement unified communications for unified communications' sake. You need a solid business plan behind it. You need to think how to converge organizationally. Most companies have IT and networking departments that are separate from telecom. They are not close to each other or communicate with each other. They have separate skill sets, different roles. In the world of unified communications, those roles have to come together.

Question: What should be done on the practical level?
McCharles: What you'll hear is that it is okay to merge the two groups together and report to a single individual. This is often done symbolically. You need more than symbolism. For instance, if they sit in separate areas of the building, you should bring them together. Start providing some training. IT people typically don’t understand voice. Telecom people don't understand [corporate] networks. Companies need to provide training for areas in which these folks don't have skills.

Question: What must happen for unified communications to gain traction?
McCharles: It is good to have a couple of people emerge as leaders either in telecom or network or both. It is a tough thing to do as a good manager, but you need to bring both groups together. You must ensure there is not a continuing battle as implementation goes forward. I've seen organizations that went to convergence five years ago and there still is tension between telecom and IT.

Question: Does unified communications make the management of all of these applications easier and more efficient or more difficult?
McCharles: The reality is one of the touted benefits of unified communications is that you are able to manage all of those components from a single management platform. The reality is that the industry is not necessarily at that place yet. You are likely to have multiple vendors with different approaches. I think they still have work to do in that area. Having one vendor will likely ease the management aspect and probably make the management aspect better. But you would be giving something up, which is best-of-breed or the best [set of solutions] for your particular environment.

Question: What do you not hear now about unified communications from customers and prospective customers that you did hear a couple of years ago?
McCharles: What you used to hear a lot was that VoIP was not reliable, that the quality was poor, and that it was not ready for prime time. Everyone is past that now. A lot of organizations may still have not bought into the fact that unified communications is strategic or that it is worth the investment. But many are starting to realize that it's inevitable because there is no investment being made in TDM technology. Sooner or later, they will have to make the transition, whether they like it or not.