I think at the most basic level, UC is the integration of voice, Email, and fax into a single interface that can be accessed from your desk phone, PC, or mobile phone. Things like having your Email read to you (of limited value I think), listen to your voice messages from your Email client (like Microsoft Outlook), or faxes directed to the closest fax machine or viewed on your PC or mobile phone.But UC also means mobility (the ability to track and find me, when I want to be found, no matter where I’m at) and the ability to work from wherever I’m at with the system giving me the capabilities that match my resources (mobile phone, home office, etc.). Cisco has a great Teleworker SRND.
But the above is just the basics. UC is also integration with applications. Yes, Cisco does some of this integration (such as voice messaging into Outlook). But I have to say Microsoft is a bit ahead in this area.They have their IM client integrated into MS Office (of course, it is their product). With the MOC (Microsoft Office Communicator) IM client appearing inside the application at launch, collaboration is well integrated, as well as the ability to escalate collaboration to voice, web, and even video conferencing.Cisco is really going to have to stay focused on federating their Unified Presence Server with MOC (which I think has won the corporate IM battle). The federation should be as complete as possible with as many features crossing the two systems as possible, as easily as possible.
Even more than this, UC has to be integrated into applications. One example I heard was a sales person closing a big sale and entering the information into an application such as SAP.SAP can then call the rest of the team to notify them immediately of the close, trigging actions such as checking their Email for BOMs, ordering parts, etc. We’re starting to see this in some colleges, when (unfortunately) there is an emergency and a central authority (usually the security department) calls student’s mobile phones (in mass) to deliver a message. This can be kicked off with the receipt of an alarm signal (such as a fire alarm) into a monitoring program (no human intervention required).Airlines (at least some of them) use automated text messaging to communicate with their customers. I think a voice message not only updating a customer on the status of their flight (like a text message can) but offering a menu of options (press 1 to speak to a customer service representative, press 2 to reschedule your flight…) is much more user friendly. Because the call was placed by the airline, the call can be routed in an expedited manner, bypassing normal hold queues.This can be done in the airlines scheduling program (no human intervention required for the initial call).
I think there is a lot of untapped potential in the machine-to-human communication space.
