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30 minute interview
“UC is a natural progression of traditional systems”
Mitch Radomir, Head, Product and Solutions Marketing,
Nortel, Asia-Pacific on what unified communications (UC) is all about and its
significance for India.
Mitch Radomir |
How does UC differ from other networking terms that talk
of convergence and integration?
UC is a natural progression of traditional communication systems, multi-media
platforms and collaborative applications. It combines these technologies and
systems into a single environment that is based on Session Initiation Protocol
and enhanced with multi-media presence features. This UC environment is redefining
how services and a range of personal and group productivity and collaborative
applications are to be delivered to users. In the UC environment we move from
complex nodal-based deployments to network-based applications and services available
anytime, anywhere and through a growing number of clients and devices.
Is UC related to technologies such as VoIP?
VoIP technology around the region is rapidly becoming mainstream with a significant
percentage of new systems sold being IP. UC leverages IP and enables organisations
to maximise their investments in IP telephony by enhancing it with a range of
new capabilities and applications. IP telephony is an integral part of a UC
solution and acts as an easy stepping stone to creating a fully-blended environment
that enables user access to voice services, next generation conferencing, and
personal productivity tools. When an organisation is deploying or planning to
deploy IP telephony, it is an easy step to UC with only an incremental investment
being needed.
Is there a set of pain points that Nortel is looking at
addressing with UC?
Nortel’s UC solutions address a number of customer pain points with each
solution being customised to enable our customers to achieve the maximum benefits.
These would include points such as simplifying infrastructure, enabling employees
to work in different ways to become more productive and effective, and providing
enterprises with group productivity tools that enable cost reduction. UC’s
key benefits are that it provides a mechanism for employees to collaborate in
real-time, independent of location or time, and enables organisations to conduct
business differently as it allows rapid deployment of a business model that
offers a competitive advantage.
Does UC integrate with the existing application systems?
Like all software-based products this integration is through standards-based
Application Program Interfaces (APIs). These APIs enable integration into mainstream
IT applications, clients and personal applications. UC will give software integrators
the ability to truly enhance these solutions. It is a significant opportunity
for Indian software companies that lead the world in software development and
integration services.
Microsoft and Nortel are coming together with regard to
the software aspect of UC. How are issues such as security being handled?
Security in Nortel’s products and solutions is embedded. We have an end-to-end
security architecture and solutions that start at the end-point and go right
through to the core of the communications environment and network. We refer
this to as our “Layered Defence” approach. It is market- and technology-leading
in its approach and addresses the needs of some of the most critical communication
environments in the world.
VoIP and next generation networking are being hampered
by regulatory constraints (especially in India). In such a scenario how will
UC fare?
There is a saying, Technology will eventually override, bypass or force a change
in regulations. We have seen this in power, satellite TV and so on and as UC
technology starts to be deployed it will drive a need for regulatory review
and change. UC solutions can be deployed in current and next generation networking
environments.
What would be the role of a service provider in UC?
It is relatively simple to bridge the gap between enterprise networks and consumer
services, thus enabling UC to span both segments and elaborate and enable enterprises
to have a real-time interaction and engagement with their customers wherever
they are located. Interaction that is real-time, presence-based and enables
quick response to customer needs.
| Unified communications has been doing rounds for
sometime now with vendors such as Cisco, Juniper, 3Com, Microsoft and Nortel
advocating the concept. Although it is interesting in itself and provides
a framework that encompasses the disparate forms of communications in an
organisation, adoption has been slow and in India almost negligible.
UC employs technology to break down communication
silos such as e-mail, IM, and telephone and make messages and conversations
of all kinds—e-mail, IM, voice—available to users anywhere,
on any system. As organisations increasingly opt for IP-based communications—e-mail
and IM are anyway built on IP protocols, so’s VoIP which is picking
up—UC makes more sense to them.
UC promotes collaboration across communication mediums
and devices. The idea is that you have access to your e-mail, IM, voice
communications from each and every device that you use be it your PC,
the phone on your desk or your mobile phone. Thereby, UC is supposed to
promote interaction with customers and co-workers making for an agile
and efficient organisation.
Vendors are taking their own different routes to
UC. Cisco’s architecture is based on Service Oriented Network Architecture.
Whereas Nortel is working with Microsoft on a software-based approach.
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—Shivani Shinde
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