With the communications industry transitioning toward a software and service model we thought it appropriate to ponder and highlight a few cool applications. As most Lippis Report readers and listeners know, communication silos are in the process of being integrated into office productivity and mobile computing application software thanks to unified communications. The days of transiting from the phone, to email, to IM, to voice mail, mobile endpoint, etc., will soon be gone. These applications will be available as a single launch point on a desktop, laptop and mobile device near you. With unified communications being that single launch point and communication vendors such as Avaya, Siemens, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, ShoreTel, et al exposing their features to a web services application development layer, business and IT leaders will be equipped with the tools to inject communications into business process speeding up workflow or creating new processes altogether. It’s an amazing time. During Microsoft’s October 16 Office Communication Server launch, Bill Gates, Microsoft’s Chairman, used the term Communications Enabled-Business Processes. This is the first time that I can remember that the software industry used the same terms to describe the same opportunity as the communications industry. Bottom line, software and communications are in synch on the new opportunities ahead in this new era of communications. With these two huge industries motivated to work with each other, an explosion of new cool communications applications will be the result.

It’s impossible to predict what kind of new and exciting applications will be a result of unified communications now that all major software and communication concerns are courting independent software vendors (ISVs) to write to their platforms. One thing is for sure, innovation and creativity is about to be unleashed on an IT area that has been static for decades, with the exception of the mobile market. What is presented below are categories of applications that will have ecosystems around them to customize to the individual or business or both.

Unified Communications: Very Cool Application

Many companies are using the term Unified Communications (UC) to describe different things. Some companies use UC to describe the integration of a desktop launch point for communications while others use it to describe integrated communications.

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 “click-to-call” or “click-to-conference” button will conference somebody else in. In the near future, unified communications will be brought into other business applications to enhance work flow 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.

For the end-user, UC is an experience that simplifies work and increases productivity by reducing delay in accessing and communicating with others. Some cool applications here are Avaya’s One-X platform, the Microsoft Office Communications Server or OCS, Cisco’s Telepresense conferencing system and many others.

The IPhone: Very Very Cool Application

One can argue if the IPhone is a product or category. I say it’s a new category of UC mobile devices. It provides integrated access to messaging, email, visual voice mail and voice communications. These communications applications are integrated and bundled within most other IPhone applications. For example, point the browser to a site with a phone number on it, click on the phone number and the IPhone dials it. Search for a Starbucks on the maps applications and up will come email and phone numbers for a number of Starbucks on which the user can click and launch the email or phone application. With Apple now opening up the IPhone to 3rd party ISVs, and potentially other mobile providers and enterprise IP telephony players, the Iphone fits into one of the coolest applications on the market today.

Voice Portal: Cool Application

The voice portal is a Web portal that can be accessed by voice commands via an ordinary phone. Any type of information, service, or transaction on the Internet could be accessed through a voice portal. While voice portals are not new, their interest to ISVs has grown significantly as it allows web sites to be more accessible. For example, a mobile user with a cell phone might dial in to a voice portal Web site and request information using voice or Touchtone keys and receive requested information from a special voice-producing program at the Web site. Voice portal interaction may involve audible speech, speech recognition or a telephone keypad interface. Depending on the user’s needs, voice portals automate call routing to access information from a variety of sources and web page content or route request to live agents.

A consumer voice portal provides general access to information; an enterprise voice portal provides customized access to customer support. Consumer voice portals were available back in the late 1990s. The early services integrated text-to-speech and speech recognition with Internet-based technologies such as databases. Types of information commonly accessed through a consumer voice portal include weather, sport scores and stock quotes.

Enterprise voice portals are more interesting as they manage inbound and outbound voice traffic and agent controls to manage calls within the enterprise.

Avaya, Cisco and Genesys are among the leading providers of customer premise-based enterprise voice portals.

CEBP: Very Very Cool Application

There is an emerging market for Communications-Enabled Business Processes (CEBP). Late last summer the IP telephony industry accelerated its software focus with Unified Communications and CEBP initiatives and offerings from all major suppliers. Unified Communications is in essence a single launch point or portal to gain access to multiple communication applications with tools such as click-to-call, instant messaging, click-to-conferencing, and many others. CEBP injects communications into business process to reduce human and system delay, hoping to speed workflow and increase the response of an organization to business events. Unified Communications is being delivered to market via packaged software and massive distribution channels thanks to Microsoft and IBM. CEBP is different. Each enterprise will have a unique entry point for CEBP based upon their process improvement priorities, funding, and project business case strength.

CEBP, by definition is a custom project. There are business process modeling consulting organizations, which are today’s efficiency engineers, working through business process to save an organization time and money. But CEBP promises to be much more; it promises to deliver a new kind of agile and competitive organization that can respond to business events quickly, satisfy customers more deeply, and in the process create competitive barriers of entry. There are tremendous opportunities for companies who analyze innovative communications technology like CEBP as it presents a new paradigm for business communications. CEBP promises to contribute to better corporate decision making by inserting human decision making at the right time with the right people and providing the right context to decision makers through multi-channel communications.

CEBP will in effect link front-end applications with back-end data center applications through communications. For example, Whirlpool business executives are summoned into a meeting when its stock price falls or rises by an extra-ordinary amount. Once the stock price change event hits this threshold a communication process is invoked which notifies the group of business executives that a meeting is being scheduled to review the cause of the stock price change. There could be a supply chain, customer, manufacturing, distribution issue, etc., which is impacting the stock price, which the executives can address. This is but one example of how front-end applications are linked with back-end business applications through communications. In short, CEBP will not only hasten existing business process but will help create new ones that allow organizations to be more agile and responsive. This is a very cool application category that includes system integrators, software and communication vendors as well as consultants.

Contact Center Business Intelligence: Cool Application

Contact centers contain the deepest and widest customer information available to business leaders. UC with its federated presence information will allow agents to expand their pool of knowledge workers, allowing them to bring the right person into the right discussion at the right time to answer a customer’s question or cross/up sell them. The exhaust of contact center data, that is verbal discussions and transactions needs to be minded to deliver business and IT leaders with business intelligence.

Business executives yearn for insight into what their customers want and think to make better products and services while increasing their brand and loyalty. Contact center recording systems collect thousands of customer interactions and transactions each day. Yet, this wealth of data provides little in the way of automated analysis or actionable information from which executives can formulate strategy or change processes, either to improve quality or to realize new business opportunities.

While business intelligence has been floated around the industry for over five years with little progress, UC and CEBP offer new tools to bring customer experience management to a new level and offer executives customer insight previously unavailable.

Fixed Mobile Convergence: Very Cool Application

I am redefining the term for enterprise-based fixed mobile convergence (FMC) with Mobile Unified Communications. FMC is the linking of fixed telephony end-points such as desktop phones and messaging with mobile devices. Unified Communications is making FMC obsolete as business and IT leaders search for solutions to provide mobile executives with the same features on the road as they have in the office. All the major IP telephony providers are busy extending their UC features and interfaces to mobile devices, which far outstrips the single vmail box, PBX features on mobile phones and fixed/mobile phone ringing tricks provided by FMC. IP telephony companies such as Avaya have purchased Traverse Networks to extend their mobile UC offering while Cisco purchased Orative to do the same. The offerings of both companies deliver value far above traditional FMC capabilities.

To make this point, we’ll focus on Avaya’s FMC to Mobile Unified Communications MUC offering. Clearly there are many other firms such as Cisco, Siemens, Nortel, Mitel, Alcatel-Lucent that are on the same FMC to MUC journey but with limited space, we’ll focus on Avaya for now.

Avaya has an over-arching mobility umbrella, which is referenced internally as the One-X experience for mobility. The goal is to provide executives with the same communications experience when moving from a fixed desk environment to a mobile environment. To achieve this common experience the features and capabilities available in a fixed environment transpose out to a mobile environment. What’s meant by mobile environment are devices that are not only a cellular phone, but also PDAs and softphones. The key is to provide the same rich PBX functionality on mobile devices as are available on fixed station sets, so executives have access to features such as call transfer, hold, and about 20 other features that are typically exposed, without needing to learn anything new. In addition to the One-X experience Avaya has conducted integration with Microsoft, Lotus Notes, Dominos, IBM Websphere and others that are both fixed and mobile.

Over this next business cycle, there will be more categories and many new cool applications. Welcome to a new era in software communications.

Posted 22 October 2007 at 5:46 pm under Lippis Report, Unified Communications & Comm.-Enabled Business, Enterprise Mobility. 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.