Vendor Accent

Unified Communications: preparing to make the move

Vivek Porwal elucidates upon how common misconceptions in Unified Communications can be overcome

Unified Communications has the power to transform an organization by eliminating complexity, improving productivity and providing an edge in the marketplace.

While many would agree with this statement in theory, companies are often reluctant to take the actual plunge. They may view Unified Communications as just too big or too expensive to tackle, or think that it will never work in their multi-vendor, mixed technology environment. Are these well-founded concerns?

While it is true that a fully deployed Unified Communications capability cuts across all aspects of business communications, the overwhelming majority of companies adopt a phased approach. They implement new capabilities in a measured way and move toward the end goal at a pace that suits them best.

In fact, nearly every area of functionality involved in Unified Communications can be implemented separately and provides genuine business value on its own, such as a unified portal, multimedia conferencing, corporate directories and instant messaging. That means each enterprise can completely control the speed of its Unified Communications adoption, in keeping with specific budget and business objectives.

The only technological prerequisite for beginning a migration to Unified Communications is an Internet protocol (IP) telephony network infrastructure. If your company is like most, however, it is unlikely that you have a “pure” IP environment. Most organizations operate with a mix of protocols and with systems and software from multiple vendors.

Can Unified Communications work in such real-world multi-vendor and mixed technology environments? The answer is yes. It is not necessary to replace varied elements with a single-vendor solution or to wait until every last TDM switch has been retired. Companies can begin realizing the benefits of Unified Communications now and integrate new capabilities into their existing mixed technology, multi-vendor environment.

The Essentials

There are several, critical “must do’s” involved in a migration to Unified Communications to ensure a successful deployment, regardless of whether the business handles the project in-house, engages outside experts or uses a hybrid team. In fact, ensuring a successful transition to Unified Communications is similar to achieving smooth migration to IP telephony. Both types of initiatives demand rigorous planning, a clear understanding of business needs and desired outcomes, and a thorough assessment of the underlying technology assets.

Here are few critical imperatives:

• Establish and empower an experienced project manager: It’s plain and simple, if a Unified Communications initiative is to be successful, it needs a responsible individual to oversee all aspects of the effort. The project manager should create and maintain the project plan and milestone schedule, manage and coordinate all activities and personnel associated with the project, document and proactively communicate the status of those activities, and ensure that changes made along the way are tightly controlled.
• Conduct a thorough needs assessment: A needs assessment provides an essential foundation for the design of a solution optimized for your individual enterprise. It determines and documents what a business wants to accomplish with Unified Communications and how those needs map to the company’s overall business strategy.

A needs assessment also includes the careful determination of the functional capabilities required by the overall business, individual departments and worker types. It explores the degree to which employees are mobile, how intensively they collaborate and how often they interact with customers.

The needs assessment should specify critical timelines and phases and establish clear delivery priorities for the new capabilities that the business will implement.

• Assess your current communications infrastructure: Once the needs and expectations of the business are clearly understood, conduct an objective, site-by-site communications inventory to document:
• Current communication practices used by in-office, mobile and remote workers
• Communications-dependent business processes
• Network architectures
• Embedded infrastructure components, devices and applications–listed by vendor, vintage and configuration
• LAN/WAN connectivity
• Remote access mechanisms
• Power /cooling /ventilation capabilities
• Available equipment space
• Determine the Optimum Unified Communications approach

Once the business requirements and strategy are compared against the inventory findings, the Unified Communications specialists assigned to the project will have what they need to develop a blueprint for the design of the actual hardware and software solution. Critical activities at this stage of the planning process include:

• Assessing the capacity and quality of service of your IP network to verify the resources are available to support Unified Communications.
• Ensuring organizational engagement by involving key stakeholders in gathering requirements and developing a timetable.
• Segmenting user communities to ensure the requirements and preferences of different work groups are incorporated for optimum productivity gains.
• Identifying existing devices and applications that can be used by the new Unified Communications solution and determining how they will be integrated.
• Specifying any new components that will be required.
• Addressing reliability, security, scalability, business continuity and regulatory compliance requirements.
• Specifying an approach for lifecycle maintenance and management.
• Reviewing the roadmap, required phases, proposed timeline and estimated budget with business leaders and affected organizations.

A feasibility study is a good option for exploring the impact of various applications before committing to a final solution. Feasibility studies allow a business to assess “what-if” scenarios in a risk-free way.

• Design the Actual Unified Communication Solution and Deployment Plan: Once an approach has been developed and approved, the final steps are designing a solution and outlining the deployment plan.

When designing the solution, focus on addressing the functional and strategic needs captured in the initial research. Doing so will help make certain the design is optimized for maximum performance, as well as maximum business impact. Optimally, the design will reinforce a company’s disaster preparedness and business continuity plan helping employees to stay in touch and to continue to serve customers, even when the unexpected happens.

Finally, evaluate whether the design makes the best possible use of existing communications infrastructure and offers a high probability of complying with budget requirements and milestones.

Deployment plans should be sequenced both by site and by capability, including the exact mechanisms and schedules for transitioning existing communication capabilities and configurations to the new design. This includes addressing “co-existence” during the time when some end-users have been cut over to the new solution and others have not.

One caution: Avoid the trap of overpromising and setting timelines that are far too aggressive. Instead, make certain that the deployment plan is realistic and attainable.

Above all, plan for the unexpected. There is no doubt that unexpected challenges will arise along the way, and a detailed contingency plan prepared in advance can help an organization make its Unified Communications deployment a success.

The author is the BU Head–Unified Communications, Avaya GlobalConnect