The Communications Revolution

An Ask the Expert feature with 3D Networks

Reducing costs but keeping service levels high is the name of the game for businesses today. Mike MacDonald, Director of Marketing and Technology for 3D Networks, explains how unified communications (UC) is aiding organisations meet their targets.

Unified communications is the consolidation of virtually any communication technology, including federated instant messaging, email, voice, social networking, video, web services and even file exchange to enable a collaborative sharing environment that provides more effective communications, increased productivity and reduced operational and capital costs. Normally we think of communications as two or more people exchanging information however UC can be extended to human-to-machine and machine-to-machine communication as well. Where previously collaboration was based on conference calls and emails in non-real-time it now consists of voice and video conferencing with application sharing, interactive messaging and the ability to launch communications from within any application all in real-time. For example, a guest in a hotel may use the in-room ‘infotainment’ system to contact the hotel staff. The guest will browse a list of click-to-call enabled contacts on the television and then selecting one is presented with a choice of initiating the call from the embedded soft client in the set-top box, from the in-room phone, or from a preferred personal mobile device.

3D Networks strongly believes that UC will bring a new dimension to the way businesses operate today by enabling employees, customers, suppliers and executives to stay in contact whenever and where-ever they need; essentially improving workforce productivity. By further extending UC into business processes a customer driven organisation can provide more timely responses, reduce costs and have a greater degree of personalisation, which ultimately drives satisfaction and hence revenue.

UC should always be approached, however, with a view of enabling all aspects of the solution over time (say a three- to five-year time scale), as just approaching it from a presence or IM, or even video conferencing solution, will cost more in the long run. We encourage customers to explore mobility, customer interaction, telepresence, application sharing and smart video collaboration as well as the more traditional elements such as IP Telephony, IM, presence, web, audio and video conferencing and application sharing.

Working together with 3D Networks and adopting a long-term business process change approach, the right solution can be determined to drive the appropriate return on investment. We have customers using UC to provide extensive data to mobile workforces and ensure teams in remote locations can collaborate and organisations using RFID tagging to presence enable objects to facilitate faster delivery of service. UC solutions enable you to do business differently, to make it easier, and to enrich the experience.  Employees within an organisation inherently know where these process improvements lie. Our job as a solutions provider is to tap into that thought process and provide the tools to enable the evolution.

3D Networks is uniquely positioned to offer expert consultation, implementation and support of UC solutions from a variety of best of breed solution partners. The consultation process involves a thorough understanding of the customer’s needs typically addressed with a multiple question evaluation criteria that explores the organisations size, employee, supplier and customer collaboration, the desire for business process change and their IT strategy. By exploring these areas we can easily determine the most appropriate path forward and establish a long term relationship with the customer to drive the bottom line of any organisation

Mike MacDonald has been providing consultancy expertise for over 10 years in both the carrier and enterprise environments for major customers throughout North America, Europe and Asia. His current focus is networking and applications with specific emphasis on web services and communications enablement.