As part of a continuing series on Office Communications Server 2007, this article will discuss the product's native telephony capabilities.

As I've asserted many times, Unified Communications (UC) is an architecture that may include many functional components, enablers and features. Presence, Unified Messaging, Click-to-Dial, Simultaneous Ring, and mobility are just some of the attributes that are often associated with UC. All of those play an important role in UC but the core functional component of UC remains telephony. In the context of this article, telephony refers to all of the features and functionality associated with an enterprise-class business voice service. Modern telephony services are now IP-based, either in the form of a premise-based IP-PBX, a hosted IP Telephony service or various hybrid models.

When Microsoft announced the release of OCS in the fall of 2007 there were many who claimed that it signaled the end of the PBX and that IP-PBX vendors such as Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, NEC, Siemens, Mitel and others would be seriously impacted by Microsoft's entry into the VoIP market. OCS does have VoIP capabilities, but for most medium to large enterprise, the product's native telephony features and functionally is inadequate. OCS can integrate with IP-PBXs to provide the telephony requirements necessary for business. However, the integration is not elegant (in most cases it must be done via media gateways) and other than basic telephony features such as call origination and transfer, the bulk of the enterprise telephony functionality will be provided by the PBX; not OCS.

What follows is a partial list of telephony features and functionality required (or expected) by most medium and large enterprise that are not available from a standalone OCS solution:

E911

E911(as a telephony feature) refers to the ability of a telephony system to accurately identify the location of the 911 caller and to accurately deliver that information to the correct emergency dispatch location. That can be tricky in the world of IP Telephony since IP Phones can easily be moved from one location to another. However, there are proven and reliable ways to address the challenge. While there are a variety of approaches, all major IP Telephony vendors have E911 functionality natively or have integrated 3rd party products into their solutions.

In some cases, it is acceptable to have one or more analogue circuits to provide E911 functionality. Also, an IP-PBX system installed in a small office may not require E911 functionality if it is connected to the PSTN directly since the telephone company would take care of the 911 location and routing functionality.

However, in any large enterprise environment, E911 functionality is mandatory. I've heard the argument that whether E911 functionality is required or not is based on regulatory requirements for the location in question: nonsense! A telephony architect or implementer has a moral responsibility to ensure that a caller can place an emergency call when needed and that the call will be routed to the correct location with the correct information.

SIP Trunking

IP Trunking, commonly referred to as SIP Trunking (since SIP has become the de facto signaling protocol), is a relatively new method of connecting IP Telephony systems to the PSTN. Traditionally, and still the most common approach, IP Telephony systems are connected to the PSTN via Media Gateways. These devices also known as IP Gateways, PSTN Gateways or VoIP Gateways, convert VoIP from the IP Telephony system to ISDN or analogue circuits from the PSTN.

IP Trunking has many advantages, over the gateway approach including the fact that it can improve the quality of voice calls by reducing, or eliminating, conversions from one audio encapsulation method to another. Other advantages are cost, eliminating points of failure, maintenance and other advantages which I have listed in one of my previous articles on the subject.

Remote Survivability

Remote Survivability refers to the ability of a site, geographically separated from centralized call control or PSTN connectivity or both, to remain functional even if the site becomes isolated from the rest of the telephony system. For example, if the network link between a branch office and the IP-PBX, located at a company's head office is severed, the branch office may have a requirement for telephony services to remain functional. The level of required functionality will be dictated by the business requirements. IP-PBX vendors use a variety of methods to provide remote survivability to their IP Telephony solutions which involves distributing some, or all call processing functionality and PSTN connectivity.

Music on Hold

Most enterprises expect their telephony systems to play music, or some other source of audio, to callers when placed on hold or when a call is transferred. It is a basic functional component of any legacy or IP-PBX. In fact, most enterprise systems support Music on Hold from a variety of sources and in some cases, custom audio announcements whose content may be based on geographic location or other criteria.

Hunt Groups

A common feature of a PBX is the ability to have incoming calls directed to a queue where calls will be answered by agents based on a variety of criteria including but not limited to first available agent, least busy agent, round robin and others.

Attendant Console

While becoming less popular, many organizations still require that a live person process all incoming calls for an organization or an enterprise department. An Attendant Console will usually support many incoming calls and will provide the attendant with visual and audio prompts and queues to aid in the efficient processing of calls.

Admission Control

Admission Control allows a telephony system to refuse call attempts or to redirect calls when it detects that insufficient network resources are available to provide a quality voice path. I've heard Microsoft representatives make claims that Call Admission Control is not required, but for the reasons discussed in this previous article, I disagree.

Standards

One of the benefits IP Telephony systems is that many vendors support industry standards such as SIP for signaling, and CODECS such as G.711 and G.729. While not perfect, interoperability among vendors has been steadily improving for the last several years. As a result it is now possible, for example to install an IP-PBX from one vendor and select lower cost IP Phones from a different vendor. Not so with Microsoft since they have chosen to implement their own spin on SIP and have chosen their own proprietary CODEC called RTAudio. To date, the only supported OCS phones are a model by Nortel/LG and a model by Polycom. Neither phone supports LLDP-MED, a link discovery protocol that can play an important role with respect to VLAN, DHCP and Power over Ethernet configuration. The proprietary nature of the product also excludes the possibility of using 3rd party softphones such as the very popular X-Lite.

Geographic Diversity

A benefit for many large organizations deploying IP Telephony is that the any-to-any nature of IP networks allows IP Telephony systems to be designed with a high degree of redundancy by separating the call control functions geographically. The business continuity benefits of such architecture can be very compelling. OCS does not support geographic diversity.

Conclusion

I remember when Cisco first got into the telephony market approximately 10 years ago. Relative to the features and functionality available from TDM-based PBXs (not to mention service quality and reliability), their product had minimal functionality. As a result, it took many years of product development for their IP Telephony product to move beyond the early adopters and into the mainstream marketplace we see today.

Microsoft will, I am confident, continually improve their telephony capabilities, but like Cisco, it won't happen overnight. Meanwhile, the IP-PBX will remain alive and well for quite some time. And while Microsoft adds telephony features to OCS, the PBX vendors will continue to evolve and improve their own products; both from a telephony and an overall UC perspective.

The PBX is alive and well. And while it will continue to evolve, the PBX and its leading vendors won't be disappearing any time soon.
 
Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Practice Principal
RIC Services, Toronto, Ontario Canada

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What is Unified Communications? Ask that question to 50 different people and without a doubt you will get 50 different and diverging replies. Even among industry professionals, hardware and software vendors, and industry analysts there is no consensus on definition. When asked, many in the business will begin to discuss UC's features and its benefits as opposed to defining what UC actually is.

In my continuing attempts to provide some clarity for my clients and to hopefully achieve some level of industry consensus, I offer the following:

Let's start with dispelling some misconceptions. Unified Communications is NOT:

• VoIP
• SIP or SIP Trunking
• Unified Messaging
• Presence
• Click-to-Dial
• Mobility
• Fixed to Mobile Convergence
• IP Telephony
• IP-PBX
• IP Phones
• Softphones
• Analogue phones
• Instant Messaging
• An Icon That Display Availability Status
  

Some, or all of the items in the list, might be part of a unified communications architecture, but none of them define UC. To say for example, that Unified Messaging defines UC would be as silly as defining IT Architecture as storage, or computers, or a network. Information Technology is not so easily defined, and neither is Unified Communications. Which brings me to my definition for UC. I entered this definition in Wikipedia several months ago and so far it's holding (the rest of the Wikipedia entry on the subject needs a makeover).

Definition of Unified Communications

An evolving communications technology 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.

I appreciate that a five word definition would be easier to remember but it would not be accurate nor would it do UC justice with respect to its features and benefits. So while the definition is a little wordy,  it conveys the complexity and tremendous benefits of UC which I hope to articulate as I dissect the definition in what follows:

Evolving

UC didn't begin with the emergence of the term a couple of years ago. UC has been evolving for many years. In fact, many of the concepts and functionality associated with UC such as simultaneous ring existed even before IP began to impact voice communications. Presence, a core and important component of a UC Architecture was part of some very early IP Telephony systems and has been around even longer in the form of Online / Offline Buddy status of Instant Messaging applications. UC will continue to increase its business value and enhance communications of all forms as it continues to evolve.

Architecture

UC is made up of multiple components. The applications, enablers and functionality listed earlier such as IP Telephony, Unified Messaging and Instant Messaging may all be parts of UC system. It also has an underlying design, purpose and structure; all of which in part, validate the architecture label.

Unifies

At the heart of UC is of course its unifying characteristics. A Unified Communications Architecture has the ability to unify communications of all forms including applications, machines and devices, voice, video, text, languages, as well as the old and the new. More details follow on the unification attributes and benefits.

Context

UC brings context into the world of communications. Context can be in a form that is already familiar to us such as "who's calling" with Caller ID. But UC can also provide context in other forms such as:

- What are you doing now? Communications is tailored according to your activities. For example, you may choose a small specific list of individuals that are allowed to contact you when your scheduling application detects that you are in a meeting.

- The device that you're using or the device in use by the person you are contacting. For example, the system could convert your text message to a voice message if the person you are calling, is currently using a voice device not capable of accepting text messages.

- Intelligent context-driven menus that provide prompts that are relevant to the device and in context with  the communications event. For example when placing a voice call, the system could present the user with the option of leaving a text message instead of a voice message if the call is not answered.

Optimize Business Processes

In business, technology's purpose is to solve business problems. UC's ability to integrate communications with business applications, processes and workflows has the potential of producing tremendous business value. A well designed UC architecture can:

- Enable communications, in whatever form is appropriate, between different applications, applications and people, and just about any type of device or sensor you can imagine.

- Reduce human latency issues by automatically initiating communications whenever a workflow is stalled as it awaits human intervention or action.

While still in its early stages UC, through the use of standard protocols such as SIP, SIMPLE, SOAP and XML, is slowly being integrated into business applications such as CRM, ERP and HR. A basic integration example would be a supply-chain application that upon detecting an impeding inventory shortage, would automatically schedule and then initiate a conference call with all of the parties required to solve the problem.

For business, these integration capabilities are UC's most compelling benefits. For that reason, many CIO's and IT Directors are now incorporating UC into their long term IT strategy.

Enhance Human Communications

Imagine a future where you don't give a second thought about where the person you are attempting to contact might be, what communication device they are able (or prefer to use), and where phone numbers are irrelevant.

UC is about communications, not technology and devices. And for humans it promises to simplify the way in which we communicate. While still evolving UC will allow communications to become less device dependent and more people centric.

UC is moving towards a future where people will have a single identify (their name: not a phone number) across all communication devices and applications.

UC can empower users by giving them a great deal of granular control over why, when, and where they choose to communicate and with whom. For example a Doctor could elect to only allow certain individuals to contact her on weekends and perhaps refuse all calls while in the operating room.

UC can also bridge demographic gaps based on age, culture and language. One of many examples is where an interpreting application converts from one language to another in real time. That may sound like the stuff of Star Trek, but that kind of functionality is being built into systems today.

Reduce Latency & Manage Flows

Latency reduction was discussed earlier in the context of business processes. But UC can reduce latency in other ways. For example, First Contact Resolution refers to the ability of a UC system to establish a communications session with the first available person based on role or expertise.

UC can also seamlessly manage media and communication modes. An IM session that segues into a telephone conversation and then later into a multi party video conference would be one example.

Simultaneous and Sequential Ring is a common feature and significant benefit of UC where the system rings multiple devices and automatically detects which device answers the call and establishes the communications path.

Eliminate Media & Device Dependencies

One of the benefits of UC is that it has the potential of abstracting away the device and technology characteristics of how we communicate. Why should a user be concerned about which device the party being contacted is using? After all, the caller is attempting to call a person, not a device. Let the UC system take care of figuring out the mechanisms by which the called party will be notified of the call request.

Conclusion

You may have noticed that, when describing UC's features and benefits, that I qualify many of my statements with "potential, may, can, promises, etc". I temper the potential benefits because while many of the features and benefits are available today, many more are still evolving. More importantly, business requirements must be well understood and a Unified Communications Architecture must be intelligently designed and implemented in order to realize and maximize its potential benefits.

There's a lot of hype and confusion about Unified Communications. I am passionate about the industry, the innovation that will result, its potential to enhance the way we communicate and its business value. However, its important to separate hype from reality and to establish some level of consensus on what defines Unified Communications. I hope this article has helped in that regard.

Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Practice Principal
RIC Services, Toronto, Ontario Canada

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Over the course of the last few weeks, I've spent some time doing some research into Microsoft's Office Communications Server (OCS 2007) product.

OCS is a Unified Communications (UC) product that integrates with Microsoft applications. It provides voice, presence, web/audio/video conferencing and integration with messaging systems. OCS can also integrate with PBXs, both TDM and IP-PBX. The introduction of OCS in the fall of 2007 created a lot of market hype and in my view, confusion. Microsoft marketing did a great job of capturing media attention and giving the impression that OCS was a revolutionary new communications technology and that enterprise communications, from that point forward, would be transformed forever. So effective was the marketing campaign, that some large organizations halted their VoIP migration planning in order to consider how OCS might alter their strategy.
 
The intent of this article and more that will follow, is to separate hype from reality so that you can make informed decisions about UC and how OCS should fit into your UC strategy. This first in this series of OCS articles discusses the topics of Call Admission Control (CAC) and Quality of Service (QoS).

Call Admission Control and Quality of Service – Short Tutorial

In the context of telephony, CAC refers to a telephony system's ability to decide whether a call request should be allowed or not. In the world of IP Telephony, VoIP is the common method of transporting voice. Analogue voice is converted to a digital from, encapsulated in IP packets, and then transported across a data network. A data network is made of a series of network links all of which have limits with respect to the amount of data they can carry at any give time. When a network link is oversubscribed, devices responsible for sending the data across the links will randomly drop data, which is what they are designed to do.

Quality of Service (QoS) mechanisms can be designed into networks to ensure that during periods of congestion, certain types of data will get priority over others. In IP Telephony implementations, voice and telephony-signaling data packets are marked with a priority label that informs routers that, in the event of congestion, that they should give priority to the telephony packets. However, if the amount of prioritized traffic exceeds a links capacity, then the router has no choice but to randomly drop even this high priority traffic. If the high priority traffic is telephone conversations then the quality of all calls will be affected, not just the call that exceeded the links capacity. This is where CAC steps in to avoid this situation.
 
CAC approaches vary but in all cases it consists of the system not allowing more calls than a resource can support. The most robust method will, in real-time, discover the available bandwidth available across the entire path of a proposed new call, then decide if the call should be allowed, and reserve the resource for the duration of the call. If insufficient resources are available the system can refuse the call or send the call across a backup path (like a PSTN gateway). More basic systems require a human to configure the system in advance with the maximum number of calls that should be allowed across a particular network path regardless of how much of the resource is available at the time of the call request.
 
Some of the arguments that I've heard, usually from vendors that don't support CAC, is that a network can be engineered in advance so that the over subscription problem never occurs (design for worst case). For a number of reasons, that approach is not practical in large enterprise environments. For one thing, bandwidth is not free. Second large IP networks are often designed so that automatic rerouting can occur during failures. In many instances the backup links will have less bandwidth than the primary links. So, a system designed to allow a certain number of calls based on a primary link's bandwidth could over subscribe a backup link.
 
OCS Support for QoS and CAC
 
While OCS does support marking voice payload packets for priority network treatment (DiffServ through DSCP) that functionality is not enabled by default. OCS has no Call Admission Control functionality. Microsoft claims that QoS and CAC are not required to ensure voice quality in an OCS environment. Microsoft uses a proprietary CODEC called RTAudio. The RTAudio codec is designed to detect network congestion or quality issues and to modify its bandwidth requirement accordingly. Also, the CODEC has an algorithm that allows it to send multiple duplicate packets to increase the probability that packets will arrive at their destination when network problems are encountered. As a result Microsoft argues that QoS and CAC are not required.
 
In my view, that logic is fine for Internet Telephony solutions. That is, if you’re transporting voice traffic across the Internet, then a CODEC that modifies its data usage and sends multiple copies of packets, makes sense. When transporting VoIP across the Internet, QoS markings will be ignored. In addition, there is no practical way of detecting in advance of call setup whether sufficient bandwidth is available along the entire call path. Even if one could determine that in advance, there is no way of ensuring that the desirable network conditions will persist for the duration of the call. And, if the fact that your throwing more packets at the problem, adversely affects other Internet traffic, who cares? One has little or no control of network conditions of random source and destination paths across the Internet. So it makes sense to use whatever means are at your disposal to ensure that your traffic gets through, and there is no point in employing mechanisms that won't make any difference.
 
But that logic does not fly in enterprise class telephony environments. First, while it is true that the RTAudio CODEC adjusts its bandwidth usage based on network conditions, it does not accomplish this instantaneously and therefore voice quality may be affected during the transition period since the algorithm starts with the assumption that there are no network issues. Secondly, while the CODEC can reduce its bandwidth usage, it does not reduce it to zero. When not using redundancy, the CODEC can reduce its consumption from 45Kb/s to 15Kb/s. Additionally, redundancy (sending multiple packet copies) may exacerbate a network congestion issue and potentially adversely affect competing enterprise traffic.

Additionally, what if WAN link is heavily congested? Should the system continue to process all requests across that link, even if the RTAudio CODEC is not able to compensate sufficiently to ensure adequate quality? With no CAC capability, this is exactly what OCS would do in that situation. Also, what if the business requirements dictate that a high fidelity CODEC is mandatory? The OCS approach would not be able to meet this requirement under congested network conditions. A properly engineered QoS solution with associated CAC however, could.
 
Conclusion
 
An IP Telephony solution, including OCS, when deployed in a typical large enterprise environment, cannot practically guarantee consistent voice quality without incorporating QoS and CAC mechanisms, end of story.
 
Notice, I did qualify the above statement with the word “practically”. It’s possible to engineer almost any technology deployment, no matter how deficient the technology may be, if one is free to ignore practical constraints such as business requirements, cost, manageability and scalability.

Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Practice Principal
RIC Services, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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I was interviewed by IT Business Edge earlier in the week. The transcript below is not a perfect reproduction of the interview and there are a few typos but for the most part it is accurate:

Solid Foundation, Savvy Management Lead to UC Success

Source: IT Business Edge | Priority: Voice & Data Convergence | Topic: Unified Communications Date Published: 2/20/2008

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.

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Here's a short clip by InfoWorld that describes the basics of Unified Communications.



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I came across a thoughtful article this morning by Art Rosenberg, The Unified-View. In a post named  Rosenberg's "Third Law" To Impact UC, Art suggests that the most significant change in business communications is a shift towards Unified Communications over mobility, enabled by device and media independence. Art suggests that this change is being driven by innovative devices and the trend towards open systems.

UC and Mobility

I agree, and I have posted previously on how innovation and the move towards openness, exemplified by Apple's iPhone, Google's Android, Verizon's intention to open their network to non-Verizon devices, and new spectrum allocation, are key indicators of a trend towards a richer communications experience. Unified Communications technology is poised to exploit these changes and its effect will be significant to the mobility industry and to employee productivity.

Telecommunications Service Providers will have no alternative but to embrace the change and to develop innovative new business models and technology. It's not an easy transition for them to make. However, I'm convinced that defensive strategies designed to protect traditional high-margin revenue sources and legacy investments are doomed to failure.

Intelligent Presence Services and associated functional attributes such as, filtering, availability, accessibility, willingness, capabilities, directory services, federation and awareness, are all critical elements to maximizing the benefits of Unified Communications. Persistence and message acknowledgment are also necessary elements of a UC system to effectively address communications between business applications / processes  and humans.

By leveraging capabilities enabled by, IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) for example, a carrier could offer a Federated Presence and Directory service that would enhance enterprise UC applications. As an example, a service provider's Presence service could be leveraged to compliment a city's Crisis Management Plan.

Upon declaration of the crisis event, the service is invoked. Based on presence status and availability, the system locates and sends real-time notifications to City officials. Notification is expedited since notifications are only sent to officials based on known availability and capability status. If an official is not available on any device during the initial notification, the service continually monitors the person’s status and sends the notification the moment that the availability of the individual has been detected. The service persists until all officials have been notified and all critical notifications have been acknowledged and recorded.

Communications Enabled Business Processes (CEBP)

Art also discusses the UC aspects of integrating business applications and processes with human communications. This is an area of UC that Avaya began promoting heavily in 2007. We are in the very early stages of CEBP, but many are predicting that it is the area from which business will gain the most benefit from Unified Communications. As Art mentions, "business process analysis and consulting are key to using such technologies".

Understanding a company's business processes and identifying areas in the business flows that can benefit from the integration of UC applications is not trivial. For the past year, I have dedicated a large proportion of my time and effort in acquiring a better understanding of the value chain elements and business process flows and how UC should be integrated. As I have stated previously, the CEBP element of Unified Communications presents a tremendous challenge to industry vendors, consultants and analysts who have to date, been focused on the infrastructure elements of UC. Those who are not able to adapt will be relegated to the commoditized and low-margin plumbing aspects of UC.

Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Consultant
RIC Services Stumble It!

I'm delighted to see that other industry Consultants and Analysts are also commenting on the need for consensus on precise definitions, and quantifiable benefits for Unified Communications. In an article posted yesterday, Blair Pleasant echoes some of my recent commentary on the subject. Blair also discusses the need for interoperability and federation capabilities between vendor's UC solutions.

A few weeks ago, Nancy Jamison, posted this article on the subject of UC definitions.

For now, I am satisfied with my latest definition:

"Unified Communications is a term that describes the continuing evolution of communications technology 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."

On the subject of business benefits, Marty Parker has written a couple of informative articles that help to map UC applications to job and value chain elements:

Top UC Applications are Now Apparent
Does UC Help my Enterprise?

Thanks Marty, your articles have helped in my understanding of  which (and where), UC applications fit in the value chain. I look forward to your future articles on the subject of where UC fits in other industries, besides manufacturing.

A few case-studies have emerged that describe how UC and Communications Enabled Business Processes have optimized business processes. In many instances the benefits appear quite compelling. Still, credible and quantifiable benefits related to productivity and customer service improvements, suitable for inclusion in the financial portion of a business justification remain illusive.

Until, we have accumulated a richer history that can be referenced, the vendor community must step up and  provide industry consultants, analysts and end users with the tools, methods and examples that help to quantify the business benefits of UC.

Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Consultant, Toronto, Ontario Canada
RIC Services




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Alright, I admit it. I'm a little obsessed with definitions lately but I think it's important, and I'm determined to come up with a definition for UC that is brief but accurately describes the term Unified Communications. So here is my latest attempt which I think I can live with.

Definition of Unified Communications

Unified Communications is an evolving communications technology 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.

Of course, I'm open to modifying my definition based on constructive feedback.

Rick McCharles
Unified Communications Consultant, Toronto, Ontario Canada



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I've been reading with interest, several commentaries on blogs related to the status of the VoIP industry and its prospects going forward.

If you haven't already, I suggest that you read the following posts, which represent a perspective on the industry with some mild debate on the state of VoIP.

Telecosm - Ike Elliott, VoIP is Dead. Long Live VoIP

New Telephony - Kelly M. Teal, Worst of 2007: VoIP

Unified Communications - Ken Camp, A Brief Look at 2007 - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Conversationware - Matt Lamber, VoIP is plumbing

Digital Common Sense - Ken Camp, More on VoIP as Plumbing

FierceVoIP - VoIP crusader recants

Saunderslog.com - Alec Saunders, End of standalone IP telephony? Hogwash!

Jeff Pulver Blog - 2008: The Year VoIP is Disruptive (Again)

The postings and ensuing conversations are interesting and varied. Everything from VoIP is dead, to VoIP is just plumbing, to 2008 will be the best year yet for VoIP. Why should there be such a divergence of opinion among industry veterans? In my view, much of the debate and disagreement is related to what has become a pet peeve of mine, which is DEFINITION! We can't even begin to come close to a consensus on the subject unless we know precisely what it is we are discussing.

Many within the IP Communications business, would insist that the definitions for VoIP, IP Telephony and Unified Communications are well understood and clearly defined. However, I am convinced, that the general public, even technical savvy folks, are confused about the technology, its definitions, vendor strategies and how it all comes together to solve business problems. This is not just a matter of opinion. I've had many discussions with customers including those from medium size enterprise, government, large integrators and service providers, and all of them struggle to define the terms, and to understand the technology and its tangible benefits.

While endless debates on exact definitions are not productive, it's time we move past the marketing hype and techno babble and come to some agreement on some common definitions. Until then, how can we possibly hope to quantify market growth or business benefits?

The common use of the term Unified Communications to describe everything under the Sun is responsible for much of the confusion. For example, I've read many growth projections for Unified Communications but in my view, the numbers are meaningless without a precise definition. After all what's included in the projections? Is the integration of communications with business applications such as CRM and ERP included? What about video conferencing, audio conferencing, mobility, or good old IP Telephony?

What follows are the descriptions I use to describe VoIP, IP Telephony and Unified Communications, all of which I consider to be part of IP Communications.

VoIP

In the strictest definition, Voice over Internet Protocol, can be defined as the method by which analogue voice is digitized, transported from a source to a destination over an IP network, and converted back to analogue. Based on this definition, it is a mature and well-proven technology and can be considered a plumbing aspect of IP Telephony and Unified Communications. Other plumbing components could include the network infrastructure, QoS, ISDN circuits and other services responsible for the transport of voice. Based on this definition, VoIP is dead in terms of innovation or any new impact on the IP Communications industry. Therefore the term VoIP, should not even be part of a business conversation with an enterprise customer about the benefits of UC. It is merely an enabler and is irrelevant.

However, we all know that VoIP is used to describe much more than just voice transport. It has become the de facto definition for nearly all IP-based consumer voice services such as Vonage and Skype among many others. Based on this broader definition, VoIP is alive and well and in fact, we are still early in its evolution!

I prefer to use the term IP Telephony to describe voice services which utilize VoIP as the transport mechanisms. However, I always make a point of making a distinction between Consumer IP Telephony and Enterprise-Class IP Telephony. The former is based on best-effort delivery mechanisms while the latter is based on voice transport across a secure infrastructure with QoS enabled delivery.

IP Telephony

I replaced the term VoIP with IP Telephony in my vocabulary approximately 8 years ago when it became apparent to me, that IP-based voice, was not just about point-to-point links designed to provide enterprise with toll bypass services. IP Telephony describes all of the system components (hardware & software) that combine to produce business-class voice services.

The components may include:

- Call signaling and control
- Media services
- Media Gateways (for connection to the PSTN)
- Messaging
- Conferencing
- Advanced features (Like Find-Me / Follow-Me)
- Automatic Call Distribution

An IP Telephony system will typically use VoIP as its transport mechanism but will usually also, utilize traditional TDM or analogue circuits for voice transport.

Unified Communications

The ubiquitous use of this term and all of the associated hype is responsible for much of the current confusion and ambiguity related to IP-based Communications. I don't know the context under which the term "Unified Communications" was originally conceived, but it's virtually impossible to find a concise and precise definition of what it describes today. Part of the confusion stems from the fact that IP Telephony and IP-PBX systems were suddenly renamed to Unified Communication systems. In many instances, the change happened literally overnight even if there was no change whatsoever in functionality.

I recently wrote a post on the subject. While I wait for a better definition that I can share with my customers, I came up with:

Unified Communications is part of the continuing evolution of IP Communications technology which automates and unifies all forms of human and device communications in context and with a common experience.

I realize it is a somewhat simplistic definition, but I believe it does an adequate job of describing UC as a framework or system. VoIP, IP Telephony, Mobility, Communications Enabled Business Processes, Mashups, Contact Centres, Collaboration, Presence, Filtering are all components or attributes which may, or may not be, part of a Unified Communications system.

Conclusion

The industry as a whole will benefit if its influencers move away from the hype and technical jargon, towards consensus on definitions and quantifiable descriptions of the business benefits of IP Communications.

Rick McCharles
IP Communications Consultant
RIC Services

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As we transition into the New Year, it is interesting to read about all of the predictions related to technology. As a consultant in the communications industry, it is vital that I recognize the trends and events that will shape the industry and potentially affect my customers. Here are a few of my thoughts on what we can expect in IP Communications during 2008.

TelePresence / Video Conferencing

Expect to see a decrease in the capital expense required to implement TelePresence systems. Operational expenses will however, remain a significant factor in the TelePresence business justification. For many organizations, the high cost of the high-bandwidth and the predictable / low-delay characteristics of the network circuits required to support TelePresence will continue to negate the business justification. A service provider, focused on providing the appropriate network connectivity with a pay-per-use / on-demand business model, could accelerate the adoption of TelePresence in some smaller enterprise but I don't expect to see that in 2008.

Net Neutrality

Expect to see more controversy related to Net Neutrality as service providers continue to test the waters with respect to public opinion and the scrutiny of regulators. My expectation is that Canadian providers are more likely to experiment with various control mechanisms than their US counterparts.

Margin pressures, increased competition and accelerating bandwidth demands by competing applications and services will motivate providers to find ways of tipping the scales in their favour. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. Public opinion and potential apathy are likely to be the most significant influencer's.

Mobility Industry

I expect many changes in the mobility market in 2008. Canadian mobility rates have had a reputation for being among the highest in the world and in the last several years, mobility has been very profitable for Canadian service providers. The downward trend in both service pricing and associated profits will accelerate in 2008. Contributors to the trend include:

• Innovative and new devices like the iPhone
• New spectrum allocation and associated competitors both in the US and Canada
• The trend towards openness will result in the Incumbents' infrastructure being leveraged by competing applications and services with no associated increased revenue
• Increased competition among existing providers as they compete for a larger piece of the shrinking revenue pie
• New competitors unencumbered by existing technology and supporting systems or the need to defend existing revenue models
  

Hosted Voice Services

With very few exceptions the availability and the adoption of Hosted IP Telephony services in Canada has been dismal. I have witnessed overly optimistic and incredibly inaccurate projections for the growth of this market since the year 2000. In 2008, I expect the most (albeit still modest)growth for hosted voice services to date. New entrants will appear in both the SMB and large enterprise markets. So, why should 2008 be different from what we have seen so far? Several factors will influence the change:

• A general trend by enterprise towards acceptance of outsourced and hosted services.
• General market acceptance that IP Telephony is ready for prime time and that the transition from TDM to IP-based communications in inevitable.
• Service providers will consider the errors of previous service launches. Expect services that are targeted at very specific verticals and horizontals.
• Service offerings, where voice is simply one component of a rich service that will include other services such as a-la-carte on-demand software products.
• Services that hold the promise of reducing the complexity of Unified Communication services, and include integration services.
• Increased focused by Cisco and Microsoft on the hosted space.
  

IP Trunking

By the end of 2008, everyone in the industry will acknowledge the unstoppable trend towards IP Trunking and away from analogue and ISDN circuits. As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, there are huge advantages to IP Trunks relative to PRI. Expect new IP Trunking services with aggressive marketing and national service delivery capabilities.

Residential Voice Services

The Canadian Incumbents will see continued erosion of their share of residential voice services. Led primarily by the cable companies and to some extent other providers such as Vonage, the impact to Bell and Telus' revenue streams is significant with the loss of over 1,000,000 subscribers and growing. I doubt that anything will emerge in 2008 to slow or reverse this trend. In my view, the Incumbents have been slow in acknowledging the threat and have been conflicted in how to address it effectively.

Vonage will likely experience a significant reorganization, buyout or will simply go out of business. I'm convinced that the standalone, best-effort voice delivery business model is not sustainable. Couple that with the seemingly never-ending lawsuits brought on mostly by their large competitors, and something has to give! Vonage can probably be transformed by enhancing the existing voice service with other innovative and complementary services. However, as it is, it cannot survive.

Unified Communications

Expect continued hype and an intensification and a more public battle between Cisco and Microsoft. Business awareness of the benefits and strategic importance of UC will grow and we are likely to see some large organizations invest significantly.

In addition, we will see related acquisitions and investments by service providers and system integrators as they ramp up their capabilities to address the increased complexity of communication services as they strive to move up the value chain. Credible and quantifiable benefits necessary for a compelling business justification of the required investment for UC will continue to be a challenge.

Commoditization and reduced margins will continue to challenge the operations of IP Telephony product resellers and implementers. Those who don't make the complex transition up the value chain and acquire the skills necessary to assist their customers with integrating UC into their operations, business processes and applications will be relegated to the very thin margins of the UC plumbing.

Rick McCharles
IP Communications and Telecom Consultant
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

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