Unified Communications might actually be happening

I love the concept of Unified Communications (UC).  The idea of a single inbox, a single phone number, integrated presence, IM, fax and just about everything else is pretty amazing.  The problem is that there are a bunch of different standards and getting them all integrated has not always been easy.  And with every company that touches anything remotely communications related piling on the UC bandwagon, the opportunity for failed integrations and other problems increases, which is not a good thing.

Cisco is one of the main culprits in the confusion in this space.  They’ve assembled a pretty decent array of UC products now, from telephony to teleconferencing to instant messaging.  And they continue to augment their portfolio with things like the purchase of Jabber, an IM player.  But they have routinely used alternate protocols (SCCP instead of SIP in their telephony systems, for example) to keep their systems relatively closed off.  Unfortunately this ignores one of the main benefits of UC, which is full integration and interoperability.

Fortunately, there has been some progress on the interoperability front from RIM and Microsoft.  There is a client available to integrate the RIM devices (assuming a relatively current version of the server and client software) and Office Communications Server 2007.  I’m a huge fan of Microsoft’s OCS 2007.  It is the best implementation of a UC platform I’ve seen thus far, with hooks in to desktops, phones and mobile devices.  And the ability to extend that to BlackBerry devices now is a great option.  More than just a new IM client, the OCS client on the BlackBerry adds status information and voice integration to the OCS system.

Unified Communications is still viewed as a growth market more than an established one, but the good news is that the end game does seem to be integration and common platforms (even Cisco seems to have come around to SIP) rather than islands of communication.