What is Unified Communication (UC)

According to the International Engineering Consortium, unified communications is an industry term used to describe all forms of call and multi-media/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 essence of communication is breaking down barriers. In its simplest form, the telephone breaks distance and time barriers so that people can communicate in real time or near real time when they are not together. There are now many other barriers to be overcome. People can use many different devices to communicate (wireless phones, personal digital assistants, personal computers, etc.), and there are now new forms of communication as well, such as instant messaging. The goal of unified communications involves breaking down these barriers so that people using different modes of communication, different media, and different devices can still communicate to anyone, anywhere, at any time

How can we archieve UC ?

Unified communications (UC) encompasses several communication systems or models including unified messaging, collaboration, and interaction systems; real-time and near real-time communications; and transactional applications.

• Unified messaging focuses on allowing users to access voice, e-mail, fax and other mixed media from a single mailbox independent of the access device.
• Multi-media services include messages of mixed media types such as video, sound clips, and pictures, and include communication via short message services (SMS).
• Collaboration and interaction systems focus on applications such as calendaring, scheduling, workflow, interactive voice response (IVR), and other enterprise applications that help individuals and workgroups communicate efficiently.
• Real-time and near real-time communications systems focus on fundamental communication between individuals using applications or systems such as conferencing, instant messaging, traditional and next-generation private branch exchanges (PBX), and paging.
• Transactional and informational systems focus on providing access to m-commerce, e-commerce, voice Web-browsing, weather, stock-information, and other enterprise applications.

Communication Tools

To deliver complete communications tools:

• VoIP telephone service
• E-mail
• Audio and video conferencing
• Voice mail
• Presence and contact information
• Faxes
• Instant messaging
• Calendaring
• Speech technology-enabled Interactive Voice Response

And delivers them across multiple convenient applications and devices:

• Desktop Computers
• Internet network
• Mobile and fixed-line PSTN telephones
• Mobile-powered devices

Unified Communication Solutions

The basic components of Unified Communications solutions should include:

• User Mobility
• Presence
• Telephony (voice,fax, etc.)
• Voicemail/unified messaging
• Email/calendaring
• Conferencing (voice, video and web)
• Instant messaging
• Administration and management
• Contact center

The communications world is split in two—between the things you do on the telephone and the things you do on the computer. The split exists because most real-time (synchronous) communications—like telephone calls and voice mail—depend on one network, while message-based (asynchronous) communications—like e-mail—depend on a separate, incompatible network. The split creates problems—lots of them. Phones aren't as intuitive as they should be. Just try to start a three-way call without hanging up on someone. On a computer, you can check your e-mail, but not your voice mail. And then there's the enormous cost of purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading two complex infrastructures. To get your phones and your computers talking, you'd have to tear out your entire telephone system, dump your PBX, replace every desk phone, swap out every phone jack. In short, you'd have to start from scratch.

The role that Syfolink Innotech is going to play in UC

As a close partner, we start from making full use of the solutions provided by Microsoft. Microsoft unified communications technologies bridge the divide between computers and telephones with two integrated servers: Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007. They integrate with your company's existing phone system and deliver complete communications services using your existing data network.

Microsoft unified communications technologies tear down the walls that separate telecommunications and computing—and they do it with software that takes advantage of your existing telecommunications infrastructure.

Microsoft unified communications technologies are more than just VoIP. They break down all the traditional communications silos. Voice mail and faxes move over the network like e-mail. They arrive in your Microsoft Office Outlook inbox where you can sort, prioritize, and forward them, just like any piece of e-mail.

And when you're on the road, you can dial in over any telephone to hear your e-mail messages and your calendar. You can even access your Outlook address book and call anyone in it just by speaking his or her name.

Work closely with other partners

In order to cover all possible areas and to provide vertical solutions to our customers, Syfolink Innotech forms alliance with partners who have the required experience and expertise in the field of PABX business (Details of partners can be found here) Through these partners who have official distributorship for individual brand named products, we let the experts handle their field of expertise on the upfront PABX systems, while we handle all the works from the IVR to the back end solutions.

Typical scenario in Unified Communications

In today’s workplace, employees have to deal with multiple forms of communication. A call in a Unified Communications scenario will appear in the user’s device of choice based upon the user’s preferences. Phone, e-mail, conferencing, presence and collaboration become intermingled, making it possible to combine and use different forms of communication seamlessly and effortlessly.

Unified Communications provides the following key benefits to business:

• Allows companies to react to change better and faster
• Creates an expanded business reach
• Improves business continuity scenarios
• Improves customer service
• Results in fewer integration issues/costs for the IT department
• Delivers industry standard solution for interoperability
• Provides ability to optimize geographically diverse people (seamless teaming)
• Reduces product and administration costs
• Lowers training costs with integrated solution
• Offers productivity improvements due to fewer mail boxes to manage

From an end-user perspective, these are the key user benefits for Unified Communications:

• Empowers users with single-number reach
• Delivers rich presence
• Results in speedier decision making
• Provides improved collaboration (application & document sharing, whiteboard, chat)
• Enables Instant Messaging
• Easier for end users because there are fewer devices to manage
• Reduces travel costs
• Includes new IVR services for users