Always on call

TELECOM

With a unified communications platform, the office is never far from you...

Imagine you're on a business trip, and urgent information is posted on the office intranet. Normally you would need to be in office to access the message. But if your company is running on a unified communications (UC) platform, you can stay in touch with the office using the device of your choice and be notified automatically of such messages. UCs can route calls to the voice mail and let callers know when you will be returning, or temporarily route business calls from the desk or office PC to the mobile.

The UC platform can work other wonders. You're in a meeting and want to make a conference call to a customer. With just a PDA, you can access the corporate directory and click call. A conference call is established using the phone in the meeting room. During the call, if your colleagues need to exchange files, they can share data from their mobile devices.

And, yes "" all this is happening in India.

"The idea is to get hold of your employees in whichever corner of the world, in the best possible manner, and promptly," says Manjula Talreja, senior director (customer business transformation, voice technology group), Cisco Systems. UC and its many features have emerged as major drivers for large companies in India to deploy Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). "Its integration of multiple communications modes "" desk phones, mobile phones, email, messaging and others "" has companies looking to benefit from a rise in worker productivity."

It can also save money. "When voice and data travel over the same network, you don't need to maintain a separate telephone network," says Ranajoy Punja, vice president (business development "" advanced technologies), India and SAARC, Cisco Systems. Even the installation costs for new systems drop by 40-60 per cent because only one infrastructure needs to be installed. Savings may simply come from reduced hardware requirements and operating expenses. There are other benefits. For example, IP-based unified communications reduced employee phone tracking for 50 per cent of organisations surveyed by Sage Research, with increased productivity of upto 3.9 hours per week per employee.

In his keynote address at VoiceCon Spring 2007, Jeff Raikes, president of Microsoft's business division, predicted that in three years, the average VoIP solution for business will cost half what it does today as systems move from hardware to software. Raikes also predicted that in the same time frame, 100 million people "" twice the number of current business VoIP users "" can make phone calls from Microsoft Office applications.

"Since mobility is certainly one of the main concerns of enterprises in coming months and years, Cisco will be looking to add capabilities in the same field, both through aquisitions and organic growth," shares Talreja, who will be gunning for Indian financial institutions and ITeS companies this fiscal. Other major vendors include traditional enterprise telephone systems providers like Avaya, Mitel and Siemens, as also Microsoft, which has UC offerings in partnership with Nortel, HP, Motorola and Siemens.

With an average savings of 30 per cent in conferencing and nearly Rs 72,000 on monthly travel through the use of rich-media conferencing on UC platform, according to Sage Research, Indian businesses can look forward to even more savings.