Unified Communication

 

Unified communications technology integrates communication tools to assist people in exchanging ideas as well as to effectively do their jobs. The communication tools being referred to here are instant messaging, presence technology and IP telephony.

Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) describes the combination of communications and collaboration technologies. Until recently, enterprise collaboration vendors were fairly distinct from those for enterprise communications, with software companies like Microsoft and IBM dominating the former and telephony and networking vendors comprising the latter. However, this distinction has become blurred because Microsoft and IBM offer voice and telephony features and vendors like Cisco have moved into the collaboration market.

A good example of a giant step towards unified communications is Microsoft’s Office Communications Suite.

With unified communications, you will (as at now, ideally) have one access point (one number) through which people can contact you, whether they are using their computer’s instant messenger, their softphone, their IP phone, email etc. The best example of a one-number reach service is Google Voice.

Unified communications solutions from Cisco deliver integrated voice, video, mobility, and presence services across endpoints, devices, and applications.

People work together in different ways. And they use a lot of collaboration tools: IP telephony for voice calling, web and video conferencing, voice mail, mobility, desktop sharing, instant messaging and presence, and more. Unified communications (UC) solutions deliver integration of these tools, with seamless user experiences that help people work together more effectively. Anywhere, on any device. They bring real-time communication from your phone system and conferencing solutions together with messaging and chat, and integrate with everyday business applications using APIs. UC solutions are available as on-premises software, partner-hosted solutions, or as a service (UCaaS) from cloud providers