Post by Martin Hill-Wilson on 03 March 2008
Is Unified Communications Still A Sensible Investment In Recessionary Times?
The Unified Communications market comes into 2008 in an interesting position. Vendors are waxing hot. IT budgets are tight and recession is lurking. But employee and customer enthusiasm for the technology continues unabated.
This makes for an interesting time in terms of making decisions. Certainly the typical vendor pitch on Unified Communications remains gung-ho. Phrases like “transformatory impact”, “radical reduction in latency”, “greater agility”, “reduced time to market” are trotted out in attempts to stoke enthusiasm.
Meanwhile IT decision makers who live in a more pragmatic reality are thinking that the stuff they have works now, they are under a mandate to cut IT costs, not costs for the whole business, so that means they’re not spending money they don't have to spend.
On the other hand opportunities are emerging in which there is a need for investment. Legacy messaging systems are nearing end-of-life/end-of-support. PBXs purchased during Y2K times are nearly a decade old now. They still work but are costing more to maintain and extend each year. And employees continue to force the UC issue by introducing consumer technology into the enterprise.
So is it the right time to venture into the new world of convergence? In a decade the question will seem silly since that’s the way the world will have progressed. But right now what’s in it for those that don’t see themselves are serial early adopters?
However you end up finally answering that question, the first phase of Unified Communications is going to start at the network layer. There is no choice in that since the rest of the functionality depends on it. Beyond that point a UC strategy can develop in a number of ways which I’ll come back to in further blogs.
So for those just starting out, what does the argument look like? First converged networks offer the opportunity to consolidate the infrastructure inventory reducing TCO. Second it offers the opportunity to centralise platform management therefore further reducing ongoing support costs.
That’s it in a nutshell. Bank Of America recently saved 15% on its pre VoIP user seat costs and made life much more simple for its IT support going forward. This seems like a pretty good start to their UC journey in my eyes and suits the costs reduction focus that will undoubtedly become more prevalent during 2008.
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