Organisations are failing to realise the potential benefits of unified communications (UC) because IT environments are still managed in a siloed approach.
This is the view of Brett Butler, Avaya senior solutions architect, who spoke at the ITWeb Unified Communications event in Bryanston, Johannesburg, this week.
“Up until today, we've seen a disparate user interface which has inhibited unified communications,” said Butler.
“One of the biggest inhibitors to UC in SA is bandwidth. While the costs of bandwidth are still high, we are seeing the price of Internet connectivity coming down following investments in undersea cables.”
Another challenge, said Butler, is that organisations have invested in legacy systems and have not yet realised the full ROI. He said enterprises that are still forking out the costs to pay for legacy systems are hesitant to take a leap of faith into new technologies.
Butler explained enterprise architecture has become increasingly complex as organisations face a combination of disperse IT systems that are difficult to scale up and face a spaghetti network of connectivity and devices.
He said with a three-tiered approach of UC, organisations can leverage existing IT investments, simplify connectivity and centralise applications in the data centre.
“Unified messaging, social collaboration, instant messaging, presence, voice, e-mail communications, fixed-line mobile convergence; all of these technologies provide a seamless world of communications regardless of what network or device you're on,” said Butler.
He added: “By optimising and integrating communications, organisations can start innovating, and bring context to the user.
“It's critical for business to respond to consumers at the speed of now as today's consumers and generation-y employees expect instant gratification in an always-on enterprise.”
Butler pointed out enterprises are permitting employees to bring in their own consumer devices and connecting them to the network. “Users need the right applications connected to any device, while on any secure network and access business information from any location.”
According to Butler, UC should be viewed as a journey and not as a product.
“UC can help an organisation lower its IT spend while improving employee productivity. This does not need to be a big bang approach, but rather an incremental project rolling out technologies with each phase.”
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