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Unified Communications (UC) and its Role in the Contact Center

At the risk of alienating those drinking or selling the UC Kool-Aid, here's a rose-colored glasses-off summary of what I think, have heard and have read about Unified Communications: you can't define it; it's not new (hard to define in the early 90s too); the vendor landscape is confusing; it's hard to prove ROI and customers are not sure about the value; proof points in actual deployments are limited; most organizations have yet to develop best practices and vendors, analysts, consultants and press have jumped on the bandwagon like lemmings promoting and professing expertise. What I do love about these jello-like monikers/acronyms - think CTI, CRM, VOIP, UC - and market focus shifts around voice and data, is that the contact center is never far away, given its dominant position as the core interaction touch point with customers. Thus the apt question in an industry panel discussion of representatives from Avaya, Nortel, Genesys, Siemens and Cisco at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008: What role will unified communications tools, systems, architectures play in the contact center? Before I get into a summary of their answers to that question, what do we mean by Unified Communications? The best attempt I can muster is to echo what two stalwart analysts had to say about UC in various tutorials and market overview sessions earlier in the week. Collectively, these analysts, Gary Audin and Allan Sulkin, have over 50 years experience with voice and data, and you can count on them to call a spade such. more»
 

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