With communications firmly in the grip of Moore´s Law its rate of change has increased to geometric, if not exponential proportions. Over the past 100 years communications was relatively static. Yes there was a massive transition from analog to digital and the introduction of the cell phone, both of which took decades to deploy and didn´t change the service, you still got dial-tone. But now with communications enveloped within IP and quickly being callable through web services/SOA, communications is rapidly taking on different forms. In short, communications is not about dial tone but about applications. There was more change in communications over the past year then there was in the last 100.

For example, Unified Communications is a communication portal, which unifies access to a wide range of siloed communication applications such as IM, e-mail, voice, chat, conferencing and collaboration tools. For the end-user, UC is an experience that simplifies work and increases productivity by reducing delay in accessing and communicating with others. Parallel to UC is the development of communications- enabled business processes, which injects communications capabilities into business operations to reduce human and system delay associated with workflow. UC will be the key end-user interface, which unifies communications and upon which communications- enabled processes are delivered to and massively consumed by users.

Unified communications can be thought of as a super-set of IP-based communications. IP-based tools, such as web conferencing, audio conferencing, and video conferencing, unified messaging and instant messaging, have been around for a while. Unified communications is the super-set of all of these tools accessed through a unified method. That is, access to people and information is managed through one interface; no longer does the user need to have separate tools to drive separate communication applications. Access is integrated so that from an instant messenger chat session, for example, a single ?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ??¨click-to-call?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ¬¨?? or ?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ??¨click-to-conference?¬¢‚Äö?ᬮ¬¨?? button will conference somebody else in. In the near future, unified communications will be brought into other business applications to enhance workflow in the communications process. But for now, UC is the coming together of various collaborative applications and communications tools which have existed for a long time.

Now UC is a big deal, but communications- enabled business processes is a bigger deal because it seeks out inefficiency and eliminates it, thanks to the ability to mold, shape and weave communications into a more efficient business process. The only other technology that did that in our industry was the Internet in the mid 1990s.

To put communication applications to work, a Chief Information Officer should consider appointing a Chief Communications Officer (CCO). Just like the Internet forced a major change to IT organization design, so too will UC and communications-enablement. Business process will be re-reviewed and re-defined. All siloed communications will be assessed and its access then integrated. There will be a need to tightly link business initiatives and objectives to this new set of communications savvy applications. In short, the inner workings of business will be re-defined, not because of this new era of communications, but because it will offer reduced cost and increased efficient/productivity. These changes will not happen on their own, they need a high level IT person responsible to drive them.

The CCO position should be tasked with application architecture development and oversight of unified communication and communications-enabled business process projects. The CCO should be responsible for IT vendor and service provider selection working with the CIO and CFO during annual budget development. The CCO will need to liaise with business stakeholders transforming their requirements into IT projects and assessing their TCO and ROI. It´s the COO who will increase Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization or EBITDA and usher in a revolution of streamlined business process and workflow, thanks to a new era in communications.

Posted 12 March 2007 at 11:28 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.