Gaining a Competitive Advantage through Software-Based Unified Communications

Transcription

1 Gaining a Competitive Advantage through Software-Based Unified Communications A White Paper

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS Executive Summary... From IP Telephony to Unified Communications: Finding the Strategic Value in Communication Technologies... Technology Improvements and Declining Costs Drive IP Telephony Adoption... Beyond Cost Savings, Onto Productivity Benefits... Unified Communications: Changing the Way We Do Business... The Communications Overload... Unifying Communications for Cost Efficiencies and Greater Productivity... Prescence... Unified Client... Unified Messaging... Unified Conferencing... Mobility - Device and Network Integration... Integration with Other Applications... Unleashing the Power of IP Communications through Software-Centric Architectures... Departure from the Walled-Garden Approach... Gaining Efficiencies by Moving Voice into the Data Center... Hardware Savings... Software Savings and Additional Benefits... Solution Maintenance and Management Savings... UNIVERGE Sphericall: An IP PBX and a UC Suite on a DVD Conclusion

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Fast-paced technology evolution is continuously transforming the way we live and do business. As information and communications technologies further penetrate the enterprise space, they become an essential component of a business competitive advantage. Companies deploying advanced communications solutions such as IP telephony, presence, conferencing, and collaboration applications are able to more efficiently perform their daily tasks and ensure more effective communication and collaboration internally, across virtual teams, as well as externally, with suppliers, customers and partners. Today, most businesses acknowledge the value of IP telephony and VoIP in reducing communications costs and enabling the delivery of advanced communications and collaboration applications. It is practically mandatory for businesses looking to gain or sustain a competitive edge to deploy an advanced IP communications platform; the only open question is how to time the migration with the amortization of installed legacy equipment. Businesses are also hearing about Unified Communications (UC) technologies and are exploring the value UC can provide to their organization. UC is commonly defined as the integration of voice, data and video applications through presence and a unified client. The ability to switch from one communications mode to another (e.g. from IM to a phone call to a conference session) based on other participants presence status and interaction preferences, all through a convenient user interface, can improve personal efficiency, revenues and customer satisfaction. UC delivers the most significant benefits to heavy communications users such as knowledge workers, sales and marketing staff, and executives. Still, individual architectures and implementation strategies vary significantly from vendor to vendor and from business to business. Advancements in server processing power have made it possible to move a great deal of a communications solution s intelligence into the software and enable it to run on generic, commoditized hardware. A software-centric UC approach offers significant advantages over hardware-centric solutions in terms of both flexibility and cost efficiencies. Benefits span reduced hardware costs, including equipment (servers, endpoints, etc.), power and space savings; lower TCO through rapidly declining software costs and software assurance programs; more efficient management through integrated, remote management tools; and easier and more cost-efficient integration with other communications and business-process applications. Some vendors have developed UC solutions that combine the benefits of advanced communications applications, application convergence and software-centric architectures to deliver superior value to their customers. For instance, NEC s UNIVERGE Sphericall UC platform has proven its value with tens of thousands of business users benefiting from its advanced communications features and flexible integration capabilities. 2

4 As businesses emerge from the global recession, they are looking for ways to strengthen their market positioning by revamping their products, channels and marketing strategies. They also want to improve resource utilization and customer service by deploying advanced technologies that offer a range of benefits, from cost savings to team efficiency to individual productivity gains. Though budgets are still tight, it s becoming increasingly evident that an investment in an advanced communications infrastructure can help companies get a head start and take advantage of new opportunities for growth. This paper provides a perspective on some advanced communications and collaboration technologies that can help businesses gain a competitive edge. They should be deployed prudently, with a view toward protecting existing infrastructure and investments, on the one hand, and enabling future strategic objectives, on the other. More specifically, this paper explores the value of IP telephony and unified communications (UC), with a special focus on software-centric, SIP-based solutions. FROM IP TELEPHONY TO UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: FINDING THE STRATEGIC VALUE IN COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES Technology Improvements and Declining Costs Drive IP Telephony Adoption Over the past ten years, IP telephony has evolved and asserted itself as the communications foundation of the future. Although estimates that only about 30 percent of the world s business telephony users are currently using IP endpoints, most businesses have already deployed either pure-ip or converged systems that can support IP telephony all the way to the desktops. The vast majority of all new telephony shipments are IP or converged systems. Multiple trends are converging to drive further penetration of IP telephony into the business market. The technology has matured, and concerns over voice quality related to jitter, echo and packet loss are rapidly dissolving. Moreover, high definition (HD) voice is now promising to give end users a superior experience compared with TDM communications. Furthermore, the cost of advanced IP telephony solutions (including platforms, endpoints, and media gateways) is continuously declining, making them an appealing investment even for the more cost-conscious customers. The available pool of professional and managed services expertise is also continuously expanding, driving down the cost of IP telephony implementation and support. Finally, SIP is quickly becoming the defacto standard for voice communications, and its wider adoption is enabling businesses to take advantage of IP telephony s full array of communications benefits. Beyond Cost Savings, onto Productivity Benefits One of the most powerful drivers for the migration to IP telephony is the potential cost savings, including reduced on-net calling costs; more efficient moves, adds and changes (MACs); lower overall network monitoring, management and configuration costs; reduced access and long-distance calling costs through VoIP/SIP trunking; and lower overhead through the merger of IT and telecom staff within the organization. 3

5 But the value proposition of IP telephony is evolving. Today, the majority of businesses evaluating next-generation platforms are looking to also (if not primarily) benefit from the advanced applications supported on these systems, including advanced soft clients, rich presence information, audio, video and web conferencing, mobility, contact center and other capabilities. The goal is to provide a comprehensive solution to end users, while eliminating the cost, complexity and risk involved in integrating multiple, disparate platforms and applications. As VoIP islands merge into integrated IP communications environments, IP telephony can finally deliver a completely new experience to business users, rather than just incremental benefits over legacy solutions. End-to-end IP communications from SIP trunks to IP call control to IP telephony endpoints are highly efficient and can take full advantage of advanced features such as presence information and rich soft clients. IP telephony is also delivering significant benefits to IT/telecom personnel. Advanced IP telephony solutions empower IT managers to more quickly and conveniently set up, monitor and manage the system and its endpoints, through Web portals and online dashboards. And as IP telephony platforms become increasingly standardized and open, IT/telecom managers are also able to easily integrate their IP telephony solutions with other communications or business-process applications on the premises or in the cloud. Overall, today s IP telephony solutions offer significantly greater flexibility and efficiency than traditional communications platforms. IP telephony gains even greater significance, however, as it becomes the foundation for a company s migration to unified communications. UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS: CHANGING THE WAY WE DO BUSINESS The Communications Overload Today, business users are overwhelmed with the growing number of communication tools available to them. Over the past decade, voice communications have become ubiquitous and inexpensive, and has penetrated a large percentage of the business user customer base. Now, mobile communications are rapidly gaining traction and are poised to become the primary means of communication for a growing number of mobile professionals, while instant messaging (IM) is increasingly demonstrating its ability to deliver productivity and efficiency benefits in virtual communications. Similarly, geographically dispersed teams, accounting for a growing share of the global workforce, are increasingly benefiting from maturing collaboration technologies, including file sharing and audio, web and videoconferencing. While the continually expanding array of communications media is creating options for business users and thus providing them with greater flexibility and convenience, it is also becoming increasingly difficult to manage and control all these tools. Proliferating interfaces and endpoints, passwords, address books, and mail boxes are becoming a burden and taking a toll on user productivity and efficiency. 4

6 Unifying Communications for Cost Efficiencies and Greater Productivity Just as VoIP and IP telephony enabled network convergence, unified communications is paving the way to application convergence. A UC application represents an integrated set of voice, data and video communications, all of which leverage PC- and telephony-based presence information. The goal is to simplify communications for the end user through presence and a unified client, enriching the communications experience by adding context and business-process information. Figure 1: Unified Communications Market Stack Unified Communications Market Stack UC Applica ation Stac ck Vertical Specific Business Process Applications ISVs (Hsptly, Retail, ) Contact Center ACD, IVR, CTI, Outbound, etc. Mobility Unified Client Conferencing & Collaboration Audio, Video and Web Unified Messaging IM & Chat Telephony Presence Room Video Conferencing Hos sted \ Pre emise-bas sed Serv vices Related UC Market Segments Services Managed UC Tracker Application Segments ce, Managed Serv vices Consulting, Integr ration, Maintenanc Professional, Deploying unified communications is not without its challenges, however. As a nascent technology, UC is unproven, making hard ROI evidence difficult to come by. What s more, UC delivery models are still evolving; for business decision makers, options and alternatives abound, but the choice is tough. Businesses considering UC need to evaluate the individual communication applications comprising a UC solution and their potential benefits for their specific business needs. Next, they should assess the value of integrating these applications with presence information and a unified client. UC buyers must also familiarize themselves with the various vendor offerings (including one-stop shop vs best-of-breed), the available architectures (such as hardware-centric vs software-centric, for instance), and the different delivery models (such as premises-based vs hosted/cloud). Presence: Presence is a key component of the UC value proposition. Users of instant messaging applications are familiar with online presence, which identifies the availability status of another party that is, whether they are available to chat, in a meeting, or away 5

7 from their desk, for instance. Similarly, users of softphones are familiar with telephony presence and its benefits in making the communications process more efficient by indicating whether a contact is available for a call. UC brings the two types of presence together in a single client on the user s desktop PC, desktop phone, or mobile device. By identifying the other party s presence status, users can decide which communications application to use at a given time. They can also select the appropriate settings for their own presence status, indicating when and how they wish to communicate with others. While most presence tools require manual settings and only occasionally integrate with calendar applications, eventually, GPS technology and other contextual indicators will help determine users presence status and availability. Unified Client: Some vendors offer a one-stop shop for UC by delivering a broad set of communications capabilities, including voice, IM and conferencing, on the same platform and enabling access to these applications through a single soft client. Other vendors enable the integration of their platform and respective soft clients with other vendors platforms and clients with complementary capabilities. Using a single client or two tightly integrated clients enables users to combine address books and conveniently alternate among communications media. Some solutions allow users to not only choose the appropriate communications application in the beginning of an interaction but also switch in the process (for example, move from a chat session to a conference call) or respond to an incoming interaction of one kind (such as a call) using a different tool (such as IM). More advanced clients also create a broad communications context for users by displaying recent call logs, exchanged s and files, and so on. Unified Messaging: Unified messaging solutions have been available for many years, but truly integrated UC architectures are now making these solutions more compelling. Integration at the back end and on the client interface enables users to access all their messages , voic , IM, SMS, etc. in one place, letting them more easily view, sort or otherwise manipulate these messages, resulting in significant time savings. Depending on the capabilities of the unified client, messages may also appear on the screen as users engage in a new communication. True unified messaging solutions, which leverage a single, unified storage system (most typically, the server) offer greater infrastructure efficiencies; integrated messaging solutions that integrate messages at the client level only are easier and more cost-effective to deploy, and present fewer security and regulatory compliance issues. Unified Conferencing: Unified communications architectures deliver additional benefits by providing audio, web and videoconferencing capabilities on the same platform. Premisesbased conferencing applications are more cost-effective than outsourced conferencing services and more tightly integrate with the rest of the premises-based infrastructure including voice, IM and presence, and address books, thus enabling more convenient and efficient communication. Unified conferencing capabilities have proven highly desirable and effective at times of economic hardship when businesses seek to avoid costly travel, yet maintain and improve communications and collaboration among geographically dispersed employees, customers and partners. 6

8 Mobility - Device and Network Integration: As the workforce becomes increasingly mobile travelling, telecommuting, etc. extending business communications to mobile devices becomes critical for sustaining productivity levels, improving internal and external communications, retaining customers and raising customer satisfaction, and even growing revenues. While advanced IP telephony systems extend voice communications to mobile devices, and applications have been available on smartphones for some time, UC take these capabilities to a new level by giving mobile users access to unified presence and a broader set of communications options to choose from. Early UC adopters have indicated that mobility was one of the key factors in their decision to adopt UC. They claim significant cost savings from turning mobile endpoints into PBX extensions, and thus reducing the cost of long-distance calls. Find me, follow me, single-number reach, and other capabilities allow business users to maintain a uniform corporate identity regardless of the device they are using. They also enable access to messages and call logs using a single mail box and a unified interface. Integration with Other Applications: As UC strives to integrate historically disparate applications, it is driving a powerful trend towards greater openness, standardization and flexibility in the communications application market. SIP, Software-Oriented Architectures (SOA) and vendor application enablement technologies are creating a favorable ground for the development of a new generation of communications solutions that empower business users to customize and tailor their environments to meet their specific business needs. In the meantime, open-source telephony is gaining traction in voice communications, and Web 2.0 technologies are gradually but steadily penetrating the enterprise market. These trends are coming together to create a perfect storm, resulting in unprecedented flexibility for IT managers, who can now more freely integrate new and existing communications solutions in multi-vendor environments; layer customized (developed internally or outsourced) features and applications on top of their basic communications infrastructure; and more tightly integrate communications into business processes. While UC delivers considerable benefits on its own, when integrated with business-process applications such as CRM and ERP, an approach commonly referred to as Communications- Enabled Business Processes (CEBP), UC delivers even more value. With CEBP, UC helps facilitate and expedite specific business processes by triggering a communication based on a specific event (for instance, a help-desk request or an order submission). Integrations with Web 2.0 applications such as social media, wikis, and blogs, on the other hand, create a richer context for the communication and enable a more productive collaboration environment. Overall, with unified communications the value proposition of IP telephony and the communications infrastructure as a whole is evolving from an emphasis on cost efficiencies to a new focus on productivity gains and greater competitive advantage. 7

9 Figure 2: ROI: Evolution of the Business Case ROI: Evolution of the Business Case HARD SOFT Reduced Communication Costs Toll Bypass, Remote Access, Competitive Advantage Integration with Business Processes Productivity Improvement Conferencing, Collaboration, Presence Reduced Cost of Ownership Operational Efficiency, Resource Optimization Tactical Strategic UNLEASHING THE POWER OF IP COMMUNICATIONS THROUGH SOFTWARE-CENTRIC ARCHITECTURES Departure from the Walled-Garden Approach IP telephony and unified communications are breaking the walls of the monolithic, legacy architectures of the past. Increasingly, vendors are introducing standards-based solutions using commonly accepted protocols such as SIP and XML. As a result, interoperability is rapidly improving and will eventually enable customers to more cost-effectively and flexibly integrate and upgrade platforms, applications and devices in multi-vendor environments. The reality, however, is that many communications solutions still include proprietary elements. While SIP is rapidly becoming the most widely preferred protocol in the industry, most vendors typically overlay it on top of proprietary software so they can retain features not yet supported by the standard, as well as protect their R&D investment. Moreover, the majority of existing IP communications solutions are based on proprietary hardware, which frequently provides benefits in terms of reliability and feature support, but also increases the total cost of the solution and reduces customer flexibility. For companies pursuing a migration path with their current vendor or looking for specific features and capabilities that are only supported on proprietary platforms, the more commonly available hardware-centric IP telephony and UC solutions may be a viable option. For customers looking to future-proof their communications investments by ensuring maximum flexibility, openness and cost efficiencies, a new software-centric approach, which is based on the concept that voice is becoming just another application on the data network, grants superior benefits. 8

10 Gaining Efficiencies by Moving Voice into the Data Center Spearheaded by new market entrants such as open-source telephony providers, Microsoft, and some cloud communications vendors, the software-centric approach is rapidly being adopted by some of the more traditional telephony vendors, and it s gradually gaining traction among business customers. Advancements in server processing power have made it possible to move a great deal of a communications solution s intelligence into the software and enable it to run on generic, low-cost hardware. As a result, the isolation of the voice communication application from the hardware platform provides substantial cost efficiencies and greater flexibility. Hardware Savings: Standards-based, SOA platforms deliver cost efficiencies on several levels, resulting in a significantly lower TCO than that of hardware-centric solutions. At deployment, the ability to use generic, off-the-shelf hardware can produce immediate CAPEX savings in the range of $100-$300 per user/license. Furthermore, most standardsbased platforms allow greater interoperability with 3rd-party devices, enabling customers to save more than $100 per seat by deploying inexpensive phones. Additionally, solution upgrades don t require a hardware replacement, which results in ongoing hardware savings throughout the life of the system as well as in greater flexibility and convenience. Finally, as virtualization transforms the data center by reducing the number of physical servers and all related costs, communications vendors are looking to deliver greater efficiencies by virtualizing their telephony and UC solutions. Software-centric solutions are much easier to run on virtualized servers and can help customers benefit from reduced server CAPEX, server management OPEX, power consumption, space, and so on. Software Savings and Additional Benefits: Software solutions are subject to more rapidly declining prices than hardware-centric ones as intense competition forces vendors to offer greater value to their customers. As software upgrades become increasingly less expensive they further reduce the solution s TCO. Additionally, software assurance programs make it very easy for businesses to upgrade to newer releases and thus stay on top of technology innovation and maintain their competitive advantage. Finally, advanced SOA-based platforms more easily integrate with other applications to support CEBP. Simpler SDKs for Web services enable more cost-effective integrations compared to most hardware-centric solutions, which require additional servers to perform the same functions. Solution Maintenance and Management Savings: Managing a software solution is far more convenient and less strenuous for internal telecom staff. It s easier to develop a software management interface that enables telecom staff to program trunks and phones, perform MACs, adjust feature settings, tie in the telephony element with existing directories, and so on. Furthermore, unlike legacy systems, software-centric solutions don t require an expert on site to re-configure proprietary hardware, but can be easily managed by a 3rd party via Web interfaces and remote monitoring technologies. That supports proactive troubleshooting and helps companies avoid downtime and costly truck rolls. 9

11 UNIVERGE SPHERICALL: AN IP PBX AND UC SUITE ON A DVD To date, few communications vendors have launched entirely software-based IP telephony and UC solutions leveraging native SIP and SOA. The new approach requires a drastic shift in technology development and market positioning. However, for customers looking to leverage the benefits of such advanced solutions, there are a few options, including the Sphericall platform offered by NEC. NEC s UNIVERGE Sphericall IP PBX is an enterprise-grade, software-based telephony platform that runs on industry-standard servers. It features a highly reliable, distributed software architecture with dynamic load balancing and automatic failover recovery that scales up to 30,000 ports across any number of locations. It provides a single point of administration with integrated monitoring and reporting. The Sphericall solution is based on native SIP and therefore supports a broad array of standards-based devices, including SIP and analogue phones, gateways and other communications endpoints. This provides business users with the flexibility to choose phones based on existing infrastructure investments, price, features or vendor relationships avoiding lock-in with the platform vendor. It also supports SIP trunking for a more economical connectivity to service provider networks. With SIP trunking becoming more widely available, selecting an IP telephony solution that offers this capability lets companies leverage the cost efficiencies of IP communications all the way from the desktop to the service provider s data center. Sphericall Web Services, using XML, SOAP and SOA, enable the integration of communications functions into business processes. As companies look to gain a competitive advantage through their communications infrastructure, they may wish to explore opportunities for integrating their telephony or UC solution with business-process applications in order to facilitate and accelerate critical business processes. This can be a daunting task with legacy and even first-generation IP telephony platforms, but it s becoming increasingly feasible with open, standards-based solutions like Sphericall. The Sphericall platform also offers unified messaging and unified communications capabilities. In addition to telephony, it features IM and text messaging, audio and video conferencing, call recording, and contact center features. The Sphericall Desktop application is an advanced, feature-rich graphical user interface that gives users convenient access to their communications applications. It integrates with Outlook for contact sharing, calendarbased presence, journaling and unified messaging. In addition to desktop video, the platform integrates with room-based videoconferencing systems and endpoints. The Sphericall platform also provides advanced mobility capabilities, including a singlenumber identity through twinning/forking, concurrent multi-device call routing, and usermanaged call routing profiles. 10

12 Compared to some other software-centric solutions available on the market today, Sphericall features more robust critical capabilities such as E911 and emergency call handling. It supports administrator-defined emergency rules and emergency call notification. Further differentiators include a U.S. government certification for security and operational performance. NEC has developed some unique vertical capabilities based on the Sphericall platform. Sphericall for Hospitality, for example, integrates with popular property management systems; supports the most common guest-room phones, call accounting, and on-property Wi-Fi; and provides a set of UC features such as desktop UC, UM, conferencing and video. Other unique hospitality features include room status monitoring and reporting, integrated check-in/check-out process, simultaneous scheduling of multiple wake-up calls, E911 direct from guest rooms, call recording, and multiple-language support for voic , auto attendant and wake-up calls. The open, standards-based nature of the Sphericall platform allows the convenient and cost-effective development of such vertical-specific applications and can enable customers to tailor the solution to their unique business needs. Sphericall also integrates with IBM s Lotus Foundations platform, resulting in a complete UC solution for small and mid-size businesses. CONCLUSION As IP telephony and UC technologies mature, businesses should evaluate migration paths to next-generation systems that can deliver cost efficiencies and productivity benefits, ultimately leading to a clear competitive advantage. During the process, companies should consider the state of their existing infrastructure and their future objectives. While securing a smooth and non-disruptive migration process is key to ensuring that the existing infrastructure is leveraged and protected, future-proofing new investments should dictate the final choice of new communications solutions. Since open, standards-based platforms offer superior flexibility and cost-effective implementation, ongoing management and integration opportunities, they can deliver a lower TCO and a higher ROI in the long term. Software-centric, SOA-based solutions such as NEC s Sphericall offer a viable alternative to the legacy and IP telephony systems available on the market today. 11

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