(Taming) the Wild West of Collaboration
Communication is key to success in today’s highly competitive, global marketplace. Executives need to make decisions quickly, but the workplace is expanding to new frontiers, and information and employees are spread out in many different locations. No longer are we trapped within office walls. We’re working anywhere, anytime, anyplace. It’s new, untamed territory for many businesses, and most are finding that there’s no sheriff in town. Enterprises today must find a way to tame the Wild West of collaboration – and Unified Communications (UC) just may be the solution.
UC is the next stage in the evolution of enterprise communications and collaboration technologies, bringing all varied connections under a single architecture. This process makes communication seamless, no matter where you are or what device you use. These communications can be delivered over an Internet protocol (IP) network through voice, video and data. One of the most compelling benefits of UC is its ability to empower mobility. Unified Communications doesn’t limit enterprises to the desktop; UC platforms can support mobile devices as fully integrated clients.
Microsoft Lync is an enterprise-ready UC platform. Lync connects people everywhere, on desktop and mobile devices, as part of their everyday productivity experience. Industry data from Nemertes Research indicates that about 70 percent of businesses are now using Lync in some fashion. Most of these companies use it for instant messaging, web conferencing, and voice/video chat. A small but growing percentage is using it to replace or augment PBXs.
In addition to delivering new communication options, UC delivers other benefits. Businesses can reduce capital expenditure (CapEx) and lower ongoing maintenance requirements, which can decrease operating expenditure (OpEx) by as much as 50 percent. But, as enterprises transition to UC, must have a way to integrate their traditional systems with new, modern functions. And above all, they need a solution that offers robust security, so corporate data is protected as it travels from location to location. Bottom line – enterprises need a sheriff to help keep peace and order among their disparate communications.
The good news is that there is a new sheriff in town – one that wrangles all these legacy and new technologies to ensure everything works seamlessly in the enterprise – called the Session Border Controller (SBC). The SBC is a device that sits at the border between the internal enterprise voice network and the SIP trunk service provided by the Internet service provider (ISP) or a legacy Internet protocol (IP) telephony infrastructure, providing a host of security, service enablement, and control functions for any VoIP or UC network. The SBC—which Microsoft recommends be included in a Lync Enterprise Voice deployment to ensure interoperability and functionality— provides interworking across different protocols, dial plans and media types to enable that migration story to be realized by enterprises while also ensuring security, connectivity, interoperability and survivability.
How are you taming the Wild West of collaboration?
