Communications, both internally and with corporations’ external partners, are becoming increasingly complex. Today, a number of additional electronic communications channels have been added to the now-familiar telephone, chat, text messages (SMS), and e-mail. “Unified Communications” (UC) is an attempt to gain control over this complexity through better networking. But for what companies is UC really worthwhile? And how will it affect the providers’ value chains?

Mr Jones is in a hurry. The figures for the last quarter must be published tomorrow, and he is still waiting for a number of important inputs from the accounting department of a ­foreign subsidiary. A glance in the company calendar shows Mr Jones that the responsible person is in a meeting right now. But her deputy is at his desk. With a click of his mouse, Mr Jones opens a chat room and asks for the figures. Seconds later, the spread­sheet opens on both of their screens. The accountant uses a ­virtual text marker to mark the relevant numbers in real time. Mr Jones needs to clarify a few detailed points. With another click of his mouse, he switches seamlessly to a video conference and obtains immediate answers to his questions.   

A few minutes later, the figures are complete. According to his status report, Mr Jones’ boss is stuck at the airport. Mr Jones is just about to send the data to his boss’ PDA when an in­coming phone call registers on his screen. A foreign sales partner is annoyed because he has not received confirmation of the latest delivery. Glancing at the contact data, Mr Jones can see that he is talking to an important business partner. He quietly sorts out the misunderstanding and loads the delivery confirmation into the network file which can also be accessed by the business partner. He closes the conversation and puts the phone down, satisfied. 

Old hat or flavor of the month?

This story does not come from the realm of science fiction. The networking and integration of all of these different communications tools are possible here and now. The concept is called “Unified Communications” (UC) and describes a combination of communications and IT solutions which is far more than just a chat client. UC covers the integration of existing communications channels such as telephony, fax, instant messaging, and video conferencing into one universal user interface. Does this ring a bell? Yes, you are quite right, similar concepts have been around under the name of “Unified Messaging” for several years now. And none of them have really been successful. So: What is different about UC?  A UC solution has three components (see Figure 1).

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