Unified Communications : A Basic Primer

Unified Communications describes the integration of communications media in a single application environment. The idea behind unified communications is the combination of all communication services and integration with presence capabilities to improve the availability of communication. In our article on Communication as a Service we mentioned about Unified Communications.

Basic Idea behind Unified Communications

Distributed work in teams and projects is often characterized by poor accessibility of the team members, the communication in the workplace today are often quite complex and dominated by interruptions and disturbances. At the same time, with increasing number of available media and devices the complexity continues to increase. Unified Communications has been described as a technical solution to these problems.

Unified communications systems are the result of the convergence of Groupware, new communication media like VoIP and instant messaging, information and communication technology (ICT).

Components of Unified Communications

Unified Communications as a technology and concept can be divided into four sections.
Integration of Media 
Unified Communications is based on the idea of media integration, technically based on IP technology, but can also use the traditional mobile telecommunications equipment and systems (ISDN , GSM and PSTN).  A logical control layer ensures that incoming communications will be forwarded automatically to the user as a situationally preferred way to currently available devices. For this, the device and software clients are optimized in Unified Communications.
Information of Presence
The status of a hand held device details are determined and displayed determined from various traditional and newer systems, so the person may see whether a recipient is currently available, for example, by telephone or not.
Context Integration 
Unified Communications associated devices can initiate a communication depending upon the situation. This request to the Unified Communications system is passed up like to an IP-based videoconferencing.

This is especially important in call centers, since all the information about the previous customer contact directly available and need not to be asked again.
Other cooperative functions
The fourth target is enrichment of communication in a Unified Communications system to call together in collaboration. The idea here is that collaboration is in real-time.

Devices manufactured for Unified Communications

There are many manufacturers and service providers are in current market of Unified Communications. Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Panasonic, Siemens are well known for Enterprise Level development of Unified Communications systems.