Commercial Integrator June 2022 - Special Section 1

Unified Communications
Why Collaboration is so Much More
Than Just Unified Communications
Unified communications was
revolutionary, but it missed
something. By Tom Arbuthnot
I'VE BEEN PREACHING THE VALUE of unified communications
for the longest time - first working at a Cisco partner and
then a Microsoft partner.
The value proposition is pretty much the same for all UC
solutions. Having instant messaging, meetings and even telephony
all in one app made user communications much more
efficient. You could work from anywhere and from any device.
You could move seamlessly from having a chat, to a voice call,
to video, to screen sharing. At the time, this was a revolution.
The Value Proposition
And that value proposition did hold up in the real world.
Instant messaging cut through the endless emails and got
people communicating faster. Combining meetings and
telephony reduced costs and improved the lives of the users.
Unified communications increased productivity for organizations;
it reduced the number of platforms to deploy and
manage; and it usually reduced costs.
However, UC didn't address the bigger goal - namely,
the " why. " We were busy enabling users to communicate
easier and faster, mainly synchronously in real time, but
didn't really address why they were communicating. It's
important to understand that we do all that to drive a business
outcome...an outcome that requires working together.
The definition of " collaboration " is " the action of working
with someone to produce something. " So, unified
communications is a tool to collaborate, but there is a lot
more to collaborating that unified communications does
not address
○ How do we work asynchronously on shared tasks and
documents?
○ How can I find all the communications about a specific
project when they span email, project-management tools,
documents, meetings and chat?
○ How do we keep everyone on the project in sync, without
spending endless time in meetings?
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○ How do we work together with partners and customers
outside the organization?
Collaboration Meets, Then Eats, UC
Initially, collaboration and unified communications were separate
solutions that lived side by side. We often talked about
unified communications as being " real time " and, therefore,
not about documents, editing, project planning, etc. Those
functions all lived in other tools, content management systems,
email, office products, etc.
Then, something changed. The idea of " work hubs " or
" team collaboration " - teams or channels to bring all
your work together into one place - gained popularity.
These tools initially combined file storage, planning tools
and chat. These tools treated chat different from " instant
messaging. " Chat was in shared spaces; it had a persistent
history; and you could drop in and out of the conversation
on your own schedule.
Of course, it wasn't long before these tools added meetings
and then calling. Unified communications, which had
previously been its own thing, became a feature of the
collaboration tool.
Now, we had all the documents, planning tools and conversations
- be they text chat or meetings - in one place.
Even relevant line-of-business applications got integrated.
For example, an automatic project-tracking tool posting to
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Commercial Integrator June 2022

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