The Risk Of Dis-Unified Communications

There is little doubt cloud has come to the forefront of information technology. As such, more and more businesses are adopting the cloud for communications applications. In fact, Cisco notes cloud apps will account for 90 percent of total mobile data traffic by 2019. The age of the cloud is in full swing, and organizations are jumping on-board like never before.

This aggressive expansion includes growth in the area of unified communications (UC). For those unfamiliar with the term, UC characterizes a suite of products, or a single solution, that integrates services such as instant messaging, voice, video conferencing, mobile, and more. The goal of UC is to create a consistent (and unified) experience across company devices with the aim of increasing productivity and efficiency. It is a growing industry with research firm Grand View Research predicting the global market for will reach $75 billion by 2020.

With the growth comes risk. Vendors are building and deploying a huge range of productivity-enhancing communications services with varying levels of security, reliability and interoperability. With that level of application availability organizations must be wary of creating dis-unified communications.

What is dis-unified communications? Because of the ease of deployment and variety of competing services, businesses and even departments within the same company are deploying disparate communications applications from different providers. This creates many liability issues for IT, potentially exposes data, and ultimately works against the promise of collaboration and productivity from cloud communications.

For example, a company or large team might deploy Slack, an effective Collaboration tool, but a stand-alone solution that may not integrate well with other systems. This can cause compliance and workflow issues when attempting to interoperate with other hosted solutions. While this approach may appear to be the most affordable route, the disunity and disorganization of disparate apps can be much more complicated and costly in the long term. When executed poorly, piecing together a UC suite from various vendors is a direct path to dis-unified communications.

To avoid dis-unified communications, firms should look to a provider that is able to develop an effective UC strategy that specifically fits how their business works today. A good UC company will help develop that strategy, starting with identifying the main method of communication used by the organization, then building the unified communications and collaboration solution around that cornerstone.

Many UC vendors will try to push an all-in-one solution whether it is a good fit or not simply because that happens to be the one solution the vendor sells. But it is likely there are multiple UC features and applications employees are already using on their desktops today. If they are using Gmail and Google Apps already, you wouldn’t want to select a Microsoft UC solution, and vice versa. Working with a UC company that can help unify features already in use for a cohesive UC solution is what is most important.

Unified Communications is changing how organizations do business and is enabling greater mobility, work-from-home capabilities, and even Bring Your Own Device programs. Leveraging a fully integrated cloud-based UC strategy will eliminate the threats of dis-unified communications and drive the productivity benefits businesses need while allowing IT to maintain control and security as well.

About The Author
Scott Kinka serves as Chief Technology Officer for Evolve IP. An award-winning, 20-year technology veteran with expertise in virtualization, cloud security, and telecommunications, Mr. Kinka designs the Evolve IP roadmap, leads Evolve IP’s project team and works closely with customers and partners.