Nortel bullish on UC

Enterprises worldwide are slowly seeing the benefits of a hyper-connected world. Disparate systems, software, hardware and communication devices are becoming more interoperable, making way for voice, e-mail, fax, SMS, instant messaging, conferencing and other forms of business communication to be more integrated.

As more devices and software are introduced in the market aimed at empowering people to communicate better at reduced cost, the byword is Unified Communications (UC) and the concept is gaining ground not just in the tech community but among enterprises, even small and medium-scale businesses.

Tsuyoshi Teitei, Nortel’s Unified Communications Solution Specialist (Asia), says, “Interoperability is important because it is a business reality.” In the 21st century, he says, enterprises are competing in a world of change where the globalized structure is one that calls for remote or mobile workers, outsourced jobs, shorter life cycles, and increased competition.

There is a growing need, he adds, to support multiple communication channels as well as the challenge of managing disparate infrastructure, applications and devices from many different vendors.

Teitei was in town recently for a talk at a Unified Communications (UC) Conference dubbed UC World 2008 at One Esplanade in Pasay City. The event was a gathering of solutions providers and technology integrators to showcase emerging and established UC technologies now available in the market.

Luckily for enterprises, there is now a broad portfolio of UC software and services that caters to the needs of a single user or hundreds of thousands of users.

A year after Nortel and Microsoft Corp., for example, entered into an alliance to jointly develop UC solutions, Teitei says the joint venture has now delivered at least 10 solutions for enterprises. These include the Nortel Converged Office, which integrates the comprehensive functionality of Nortel’s Communication Server (CS) 1000 IP-PBX with the Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007.

Another solution is the Nortel Multimedia Conferencing 5.0 for Office Communications Server 2007, which provides dial-in audio bridge capabilities that enable non-users of Office Communications Server 2007 to dial into the conference.

Nortel claims that since the beginning of the alliance, the company has recorded more than 600 customer wins for its joint solutions worldwide.

“Nortel and Microsoft share a common vision that business communications are evolving to software, enabling enterprises to more simply and effectively integrate communications with business processes,” Joel Hackney, Nortel’s president for enterprise solutions, said in a statement.

“With solutions that span VoIP, branch office, conferencing, IP phones, data networking and integration services, Nortel is providing enterprises with the industry’s most complete portfolio of unified communications solutions to enhance their Microsoft OCS experience,” he adds. 

In the Philippines, Nortel’s country manager Armando Pascual says that while they are still building a market for a full UC suite for local enterprises, the potential for uptake is good.

“UC, as a concept, was only introduced in the Philippines last year. However, companies here are familiar with the concept. They do integrated chat, video and audio conferencing, e-mail, fax and voice communications. These are early stages of UC,” Pascual says, adding that seeing the full benefits of the concept may not be far behind.

The service industries, he says, may be early adopters as well as the financial community and the BPOs. “For one, these companies would greatly benefit if they can increase touch-points with customers,” he says.

In the Asia-Pacific, Teitei discloses that India and Australia were the early adopters of UC. “In India, enterprises do not need to be convinced of the return on investment of UC. They recognize it right away,” he says. 

In Thailand, he says UC adoption is strong in the education sector while in Indonesia a large petroleum company has deployed UC. “UC has a lot of benefits. If it can make a project team more efficient, there would be savings in any industry,” he adds.

Teitei discloses that both Nortel and Microsoft have invested a lot on R&D for product development.

“We believe that technology will be more competitive. Our joint efforts are focused on interoperability. At the start, our solutions may not be much different from competitors but every wave (of product development) has a new set of solutions. Then our level of differentiation begins,” he says.

This level of differentiation with other UC products in the market is significant for emerging markets like the Philippines and both for large enterprises and SMBs as it could mean more cost-effective solutions and better service levels.

UC, Teitei adds, is a major part of Nortel’s long-term strategy and the next generation of solutions will focus on fully hosted unified communications and contact center integration.