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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/voip/0,3800004463,39127965,00.htm

Will IP unify communications?
It's on the way...

By Elizabeth Biddlecombe

Published: Friday 18 February 2005

The holy grail of convergence is unified data and voice communications. Although products are available that allow companies to do just this, take-up remains slow. Elizabeth Biddlecombe investigates.

Voice over IP (VoIP) can play a valued role in applications that bring multiple communications methods together in the one window. This could mean the ability to make a call, send a text message or an instant message (IM) to someone just by clicking on their name in a contact database. Presence information can be used to identify how to reach someone best and when.

While heavyweight applications from the likes of Siemens, Nortel and others allow this kind of thing, free applications such as Skype also allow instant messaging, file transfer and conferencing calling, as well as basic one-to-one calling.

Dispersed teams such as sales forces or field service departments are ripe candidates for this approach. Other likely users are home workers and people in the education and healthcare sectors. Paul Rowe, IP telephony product and solutions manager at Nortel, says: "It reduces delay, telephony tag, voicemail jail. It is good for remote workers to feel more closely connected with a dispersed team."

Another segment that benefits from this type of application is users with hearing or visual disabilities. Cable & Wireless has provided a unified messaging system to the Disability Rights Commission (DRC) whereby voice messages can be read as emails as well as being listened to as audio files on the computer. The DRC plans to add text-to-speech (TTS) so that staff can hear email messages via their voicemail.

But despite the obvious utility, businesses have not yet jumped on board and adopted these applications, even though some - web conferencing, for example - do not require a VoIP infrastructure to be put in place.

Falk Bleyl, senior product manager for VoIP and converged networks at communications provider Thus, recently asked a conference audience how many of them had used Microsoft NetMeeting - an old and simple application routinely bundled with the Windows operating systems - for either video conferencing, VoIP or whiteboarding. "Less than five per cent of them had and of those that have, only a tiny percentage use it regularly," he said.

"The VoIP market is still fragmented and immature. Instant messaging, point-to-point video and collaboration work really well with VoIP but not many people know that yet," he continued.

Bleyl is himself an avid user of integrated communications via a Nortel 'softphone' client.

Market confusion is not helped by the fact that, as Simon Smith, product manager at Toshiba Business Communications (BCD) points out, there is no single source for this kind of application - a whole range of vendors are involved. He adds that in some instances, "Customers need new work flows, better CRM technology, improved integration to back office systems and cultural changes within the organisation."

Nortel's Rowe describes the UK as being "a very good and experienced market" when it comes to convergence, particularly since home working and flexible working is more accepted than in many countries in central and southern Europe.

But Nick Applegarth, vice president of EMEA sales at voice technology company Envox, reckons UK companies more commonly use unified communications in a customer facing situations rather than in internal deployments "because there is typically a clearer business case and more tangible ROI".

That said, the NHS is using a web conferencing tool for internal purposes: people from over 700 different organisations within the system are using ECP Connect from Interwise to keep up with the NHS' 'Ten High Impact Changes' that are designed to help health and social care agencies improve their care.

According to Philip O'Rourke, information and communications technology manager for the Health Care Standards Unit, the organisation facilitating the web cast and web meeting series for the NHS Modernisation Agency, the level of interaction during these virtual sessions is greater than during face-to-face meetings. In addition the debate is more detailed, he says, as the participants can interact with each other as well as the moderator. Even users on a dial-up can use the system, while audio can be delivered via VoIP to the desktop via the PSTN to the desk phone or to someone on a mobile phone.

Employees working at the new California office of Colorado-based ManagedStorage International (MSI), a data storage company, enjoy the new things they can do because of their converged solution.

They were sold, according to CFO Paul McKnight, once they found out about the combined voice and data service from Polycom and GoBeam at a highly competitive price. "Looking up recent incoming calls and clicking on them to dial is a feature we use often," he added. "The 'follow me' capability, which allows the phones to be forwarded, also is a great benefit, especially for our sales force. The voicemail system is very good as well. We value the ability to retrieve voice mail from a computer or laptop without dialling in to the system."

These are just a couple of the many companies from single person businesses to large multinationals that make use everything-over-IP applications. The future will likely include these integrated applications. But it's unlikely to bring about a near-term change in the way we do business - especially when you have market commentators such as Deloitte predicting that VoIP will remain a niche product, and a largely unprofitable one, this year.