Unified Communication

With communication technology being developed constantly people are becoming more and more dependent on the benefits it provides.eg: telephone, internet  and other communicating devices have  conked out the distance and time barriers so that people can communicate in real time or near real time when they are not together. There are now many other barriers to be overcome. People are using many different devices to communicate like wireless phones, personal digital assistants, personal computers.

What is Unified Communication?

Unified communications involves breaking down of communication barriers so that people using different modes of communication, different media, and different devices communicate to anyone, anywhere, at any time.

Communication technology encompasses a broad range of mediums, from the internet to radio to television to wireless signal providers.

What is Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)?

It is a delivery model that integrates real time communication like instant messaging , IP telephony, desktop sharing with non real time communication like email,fax,voicemail are outsourced to a third-party vendor and delivered over an IP network—most often the Internet.

UCaaS includes variety of communications and applications and services outsourced to the third party provider to optimize business processes and enhance human communications by providing high level of availability, flexibility and scalability.

Benefits of UCaaS

• Provides accessibility and flexibility in connecting offices and mobile workers.
• Reducing IT complexity by helping easy migration from legacy systems
• Facilitating better communication.
• Better decision making by enabling immediate access to people, data and applications any-time, anywhere, on any device.
  E.g. your boss can find you immediately, have a video chat or conference with you, share screens with you, and you can both be anywhere.
• Availability is one of the key advantages of UC—the ability to see who is online and who is unavailable. This facilitates real-time communication via methods that are faster and more direct than e-mail.

The UCaaS market is on the increase. Recent research published in the Markets and Markets comprehensive 2013-2018 report indicates that 2014 represents the beginning of the technology’s widespread adoption. By 2018, revenue is expected to grow more than double from its current $2.52 billion to $7.62 billion. This growth is no surprise, because of the increasing number of communication channels and interactions.

Types of UCaaS include: 

• Single Tenant system: In this approach customized software is integrated with on premises applications for single customer.
• Multi- tenant systems: In this approach single software platform is shared by multiple clients. This is generally cheaper than the Single tenant system.

Many companies, mainly small businesses, use UCaaS to avoid the capital and operational expenses associated with deploying a unified communications solution on their own.

Businesses are making moves to add UCaaS tools to their portfolio to increase productivity and seize advantage of the latest transformative technologies. It provides a platform to upgrade communications both internally and externally, and speeding up the ability to find and connect with others by enabling immediate access to people, data and applications any-time, anywhere, on any device.

About Author:
Mohini Bhandari is a consultant in Systems Plus Pvt. Ltd. Within Systems Plus, she actively contributes to the areas of Technology and Information Security. She can be contacted at mohini.b@spluspl.com