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The unified communications wave has swept across several large enterprises in the country. But CTOs/CIOs are still cagey about a number of facts such as the extensive need for routers and issues related to configuration. However, there is a sharp rise in the demand for unified communications as enterprises are looking at thinning their spends in order to enhance the bottom-line.

Billed as a mandatory item in enterprises' communication tools set, the effective utilization of unified communications assists enterprises-both large and medium scale-add value to an array of business processes. It also substantially improves productivity and efficiency, and helps in gaining tangible profits.

Has unified communications really simplified the issues faced by enterprises? Has it offered what the enterprises had asked for? Let's explore.

Benefits Aplenty
Unified communications helps key people to become more efficient and effective, regardless of where they are working, by providing universal access to people and making enterprise communication tools accessible and more transparent.

"Unified communications is at the heart of our solutions. If I make a comparison between our expectations and actual realizations, I would say we are happy with the solutions offered by vendors, though we are skeptical about some issues," says Arindam Bose, head-IT, LG Electronics India.

LG has deployed unified communications and some of the benefits the company has seen include assistance in conducting interviews systematically, and reduction of complex issues such as those related to support, management, billing. Financial benefits have been to the tune of 20-25%, and cost of ownership has also reduced.

Godfrey Phillips, the second largest player in the Indian cigarette industry with an annual turnover of over $265 mn, had deployed a WAN in 2003 and installed a VoIP telephone system and linked its videoconferencing system to it as well.

"Deployment of unified communications for contact centers is not very large in number yet but there are centers with email/voice and chat catering to our customers in the US/UK. HTMT as an organization uses unified communications across multiple platforms and geographies to ensure online availability of information to enable decisions to interface with our customers," says C Subramanya, vice president (technologies), HTMT, a leading BPO.

Some Concerns
Enterprises are up in arms as there is growing pressure on improving performance. Concerns have overtaken advantages, while a few enterprises say the simplification aspect is miles away.

According to Alagu Balaraman, executive vice president (IT & corporate development), Godfrey Phillips, "There were issues of availability and congestion, leading to breaks in the voice. At the same time, telephony costs were rapidly dropping, while WAN costs were not. There was doubt on the financial viability of adopting VoIP. Capital costs were high due to regulatory restrictions on linking with the same EPABX units used for telephony. As a result, VoIP usage dropped significantly. Video- conferencing was much older and there were issues of quality of images, complexity of operation and, also, breaks in connections.

"Users do not have faith in the systems and use them only under very special circumstances," he adds.

According to N Chandrasekaran, general manager, IT, Ashok Leyland, "As per government regulations you can't have voice over Internet. We have employed voice over our private networks using a separate PBX dedicated for voice within our locations, without mixing it with the public voice network."

Ashok Leyland has been facing challenges too with respect to costs. The cost of data connectivity can be justified only if the call traffic is high between the locations. In the current context when the STD / ISD charges on PSTN have come down drastically, it's far cheaper to use the regular phones. "The extensive need for hardware with regard to routers and configuration needed to establish dialing when we use IP voice, drive the users to resort to PSTN instead of IP phones," says Chandrasekaran.

Integration of various platforms and cultures across centers are the main challenges faced by HTMT. Unified forms of reports across platform and made seamlessly available across media is an ongoing task. "Implementation for our customers as a contact center practice is yet to get initialized and we are receiving queries from a few customers on such services. Going forward on this could be a trend in the contact centers and we are in constant discussions with our technology partners to address the new challenges," says HTMT's C Subramanya.

Some of the major concerns include dependence on one vendor, which may be a negative thing, as turnaround time is not up to the mark. The last mile cost can go up because of remote locations. Companies are now opting for wireless solutions for this. Issues such as security, reliability and ease of maintenance are critical in the case of unified communications.

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