In Lippis Report Issue 51 I wrote about how web services & SOA are redefining the IP telephony landscape. In short, those suppliers who embrace web services as an application development platform will be better positioned than those who don´t. But the shear fact that web services are becoming part of the communications application environment will send shock waves across the industry, disrupting every facet of how communications support and enable business. One of those waves will hit IT, networking and telecommunication departments shortly, and it´s a tsunami.

Network Managers Loose Grip on Communications Architecture

The introduction of IP telephony caused a change to who defines, operates and manages communications for many corporations. Traditionally, telecommunication departments managed corporate communications and reported into facility management. Telecommunication departments managed PBXs and their vendors, service provider services and also kept track of tariffs and billing, voice mail services, dial plans, etc. As converged voice and data networking took off, communications responsibilities started to shift to those who managed network infrastructure, i.e., network architects and managers who were responsible for the performance and operations of switches, routers and their wide area links. By abstracting communication services to be a ?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ??¨callable?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ¬¨?? entity within a web services-based Business Process Modeling tool or BPM, the design and purchase responsibility of communications will shift yet again into executive IT management. Think of it this way: communication will increasingly become linked to business process through applications, not the phone. Those who define business process automation through IT will define the underlining communications infrastructure.

Software versus Hardware Vendor Competition

This change in communications architecture responsibility and authority will have huge implications for both the supply and demand side of the market. >From the vendor point of view, vendors who are thought of as strategic from a CIO perspective, such as Microsoft, pose an increasing threat to IP telephony providers as Microsoft adds voice communications capabilities within its Live Communications Server or LCS. IBM, Sun, Oracle, BEA et al., could increasingly be in a position of authority to define communication as their Java superplatforms inject communications into business process. In short, the IP telephony vendor´s customer is shifting. If IP telephony vendors are not aligned with business process architects and web services/SOA application developers they will be calling upon those with no authority to purchase their products and services. A chilly reality for any sales person. So is this wave far out to sea or about to break on shore?

New Service Creation Model Emerges

In the minds of many industry players, the convergence of voice and data at the network layer is a fait accompli. The entire IT industry is starting to shift focus and investments toward tightly linking communications to business process. In short, convergence is moving up the stack to the application layer. There are strong economic drivers fueling Internet and web technologies, best practices and rapid agreement on standards. One very important driver is that both corporate IT departments and telecommunication service providers are embracing web services as their service creation strategy. These two industries, each worth hundreds of billions of dollars, are now focused on a common service creation model which is sure to generate huge efficiencies which will lower cost and the barrier of entry for service creation based upon web services.

IP networks and web services permit telecommunication-oriented services and business application-oriented services to blend together in ways never before possible in support of simplifying human activities, enriching human collaboration and optimizing business processes. Conditions are right for the development community at large to deliver on the long-awaited promise of innovation over IP. This innovation will not come just from the few thousands proficient in CTI, but rather from millions of developers already skilled in coding Java and .NET applications and the business analysts who will compose applications using Services-orientated modeling tools and Business Process Execution Language (BPEL).

With web services poised to be the new programming interface for IP telephony, communications programming will no longer be the province of an elite and relatively closed community of programmers. In fact, a general purpose IT developer with web services skills will soon be able to program communications just as well as those with years of communications programming experience. As mentioned above, this new emphasis on business communication applications based upon web services and SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) will shift IP telephony architecture, design and purchase decisions toward IT management and business stake holders and away from networking and telecommunications management and communications developers.

Business communications applications mean a development focus on business process alignment with communications. Business process is either structured or unstructured. Structured business process could simply be the levels and number of signatures required to open a purchase order, or the human resources life cycle that tracks an employee from hire to retire. The links of a supply chain or levels of a distribution system and the communications which control them are structured business process with strong cause and effect consequences. The hundreds of e-mails, voice calls and instant messages per day which most knowledge workers respond to is a less structured form of business process, but it is process just the same. Office productivity communication flows, be they voice calls, instant messages, voice mail, faxes, e-mail, conferencing, etc., are all examples of unstructured business process. When you´re communicating you´re engaged in either a structured or unstructured business process. Unfortunately, unstructured means a loose coupling or alignment between communications and business process. This is about to change.

Communications Enabled Business Applications

At the epicenter of both structured and unstructured business process is collaboration or the ability for employees, partners and suppliers to move work flow and satisfy customers. The movement of information over converged IP networks has been a boon to corporate productivity. Nearly every corporation in the global economy has benefited from IP networks as they have enabled the extracting of delay, both human and system, in business process. In business process it´s not that just one human has to engage another human in communication to move work product forward; it´s the inability of humans to react to situations in microseconds. Communications-enabled business process can. For example, a triggered event that automatically engages the right personnel or applications or an alert that automatically puts in motion a business process to address a situation is communications-enabled business process. Communications-enabled business process can be event driven with an ability to sense a business scenario, which triggers an event and the ability for the enterprise to respond in real time, if required.

Deeply embedding communication into the business process offers the following value: improves knowledge worker productivity, enables the business to respond in near real time to situations, and enables Business Communication-Activity Monitoring or (BCAM). Creating a business application enabled by communication for situational context is at the heart of IP telephony´s third phase. The third phase of IP telephony was detailed in Lippis Report Issue 51. A rules-driven communication environment, which is tightly linked into business process, will enable enterprises to realize strategic value from IP telephony solutions.

So what are the killer applications? The answer: there is no single killer application, but many smaller, customized applications that in their totality are the killer application. Many enterprises have started their own application development efforts by extracting delay associated with unstructured business process with click-to-call and click-to-conference tools while in the process aligning communications with business needs. Just like IT focused on automating structured business process such as transaction processing over the past forty years, removing delay to organize knowledge workers into conferences will be one of the first applications to be automated and integrated into business process. The ability to improve communications between organizations and remove impediments in the value chain is of high strategic value to most concerns.

There is a tsunami coming but its impact will not be felt in one huge wave, but it smaller wavelets. As IT managers and developers create communications-enabled business applications with web services, the power and influence which network managers held over communications will increasingly weaken with every new communication application wave deployed.

Posted 3 April 2006 at 7:35 am under Lippis Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.