I recently wrote an article for VON Focus that’s certainly going to get me shot.
I’m beginning to feel that the second sacred cow of telephony is unified communications (the first being IMS). Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, unified communications is the latest in the series of attempts by telecommunication vendors to add value into their customers networks, but I’m not buying it. The central premise of unified communications is general efficiency - it allows users to find each other faster, and have lesser amounts of friction as they try to manage their communications experience. And, as I said in the article, efficiency is a good thing, right? I like it - you like it - bully for us.
Here’s my basic problem - arguing a business case based on general efficiency is too much of a “trust me” argument for this old man. With a few notable exceptions, general efficiency gains are difficult to prove or to capture. Specific efficiency gains are easy to see and monetize. Let’s give a direct example : find-me-follow-me makes calling more efficient, and there’s no doubt. I will get the call quicker because it’s more likely to find me. But what’s the impact to my company’s bottom line as a result? Hard to tell - harder to prove. Now, let’s contrast that with the older VoIP gateways. Using voice compression, you could fit multiple voice channels - up to 6 - on the same DS0. When voice was expensive, this was valuable stuff, as you could radically reduce your phones bills, especially for international routes. What’s the impact on the bottom line? Your long distance charges cost 84% less. That’s an efficiency you can point to, quantify, sell and monetize.
I think this is a “tell” - this is how you know that your poker-playing vendor might be bluffing you. You can’t argue that unified communications has no value… but it’s really hard to quantify, hard for them to sell and difficult for investors to monetize. This is the best they’ve got? If so, I say this is not good.
Start shooting now - I know it’s coming.
One Comment
I’d say that vendors fail to understand the value that users perceive in being able to partition their communications channels, and keep them separate. There are obvious reasons why you wouldn’t want an SMS every time you got a new email, but the same thinking usually finds flaws in almost every other example of cross-media unification.
Also, the idea that there’s one “right” way of doing it strikes me as fundamentally false. UC is an experience, not a product or service. It’s delivering the right things to each user as an individual. The urge to build a monolithic application seems strong. The reality is probably closer to a bunch of APIs into the underlying separate services, and then very lightweight point solutions to very specific business problems.
RIP UC, long live CEBP…?