Unified Communications Building Blocks

Unified communications is a “Strategy”. It is not a single technology or product. Unified communications includes a group of technologies that integrate voice with other features, such as email, instant messaging, presence, and videoconferencing. Using these technologies, unified communications can improve an organization’s workflow by supporting more effective communications.

The five unified communications building blocks are: Network Infrastructure, IP Communications, Server Hardware/Software, Business Applications, and Communication-Enabled Business Processes.

1. Network Infrastructure An IP network infrastructure is the foundation of unified communications. The network must be able to support both real-time and non-real time traffic.

2. IP Communications The primary function of the IP communications building block is to provide voice communications using IP Telephony platforms, wired/wireless clients and video conferencing.

3. Server Hardware and Operating Systems A server is a computer system that has been designated for running a specific server application. Server applications may include: E-mail servers, Web servers, Customer Relations Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Supply Chain Management (SCM) servers. Server applications are designed to run on specific operating systems such as Windows 2008 and Linux.

4. Business Applications Business applications support an organization’s business processes. Business applications can be obtained by purchasing Off-the-Shelf or developed in-house to meet an enterprise’s specific requirements. The defacto standards for developing business applications are Java (SUN) and .NET (Microsoft). Business applications have traditionally been developed to support an individual departments requirements such as accounting or manufacturing. Middleware was used to interconnect different applications to allow the reuse of data between systems. Application integration is a key part of business today. Applications allows the sharing and reuse of corporate critical data and helps a business become more flexible and responsive.

5. Communication-Enabled Business Processes A business process is a collection of related structured business activities that produce a product or service. IP communications can be used to automate business processes. This is called Communication-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP). CEBP provides business processes and applications with the ability to sense events, respond, and track real-time multi-channel communications between decision makers. The core idea is to integrate communications capabilities into software-enabled business processes, by providing applications with “the ability to initiate real-time communications”. The notion is that by combining integrated communications functionality with the insights that can be gained through use of enterprise software, organizations will gain the ability to have their systems “sense events, manage communications and track activity to closure.”