'UC Reduces Downtime Implicit In Interactions'

A lot has been said and written about the ways in which cost optimisation can work in a business environment. What is the scope of communication in reducing the TCO of a company and how can UC play a role in it? Sameer Mishra, SE leader, Enterprise Solutions, Nortel, answers these and some more questions in a conversation with BizTech2.com.

What are your views on Unified Communications and how do you think it can help in cost reduction?

UC basically lets the enterprise user access all devices from a single device. For instance, an employee can use his laptop to make a call to his colleague. Nortel believes that the largest single benefit of unified communications is in the ability to reduce the latency of human communication. It does this by making some of the serial activities parallel. For example, if an employee is working on a spreadsheet and a client requests a meeting with him, a message box may appear in the corner of his spreadsheet screen and he can simply click to respond, rather than having to exit his spreadsheet application. Also, an absence of UC means large documents are often passed across the network several times, which drains networking and storage resources.

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Also, Unified Communications (UC) can reduce the downtime that is implicit in any interaction. Consider this: according to an AT&T study, more than 70 percent of business calls are placed on hold for an average of 45 to 60 seconds each. The average executive spends 17 minutes each day on hold, and some 80 percent of phone calls end up in voice mail. UC curbs this wastage of time by letting users reach the right person at the right time through their preferred mode of contact. This goes way beyond slashing hold times or staying clear of voice mail. It means organising information faster and getting that information to the right person in a usable format when the recipient needs it most.

According to you, what makes Nortel SCS an ideal UC solution for SMEs?

The main benefit offered by Nortel SCS to SMEs is in the form of cost savings. SCS can eliminate or reduce the expense of outsourced conferencing fees; tele-worker expenses (second-line costs); facilities costs and legacy PBX maintenance charges.

The payback time for an SCS solution can be as short as six to 12 months, according to customers and partners. Using our SCS Business Case Calculator, we run a tailored analysis of an SME’s payback time and return on investment.

How is the SCS solution different from your earlier UC offerings?

SCS has been designed using open standards SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and SOA (Services Oriented Architecture), which has a lot of implications. In essence, rather than ‘a box that

comes with pre-set features’ approach, with SCS, communications capabilities are broken down into modular and open components.

Open standards continue to evolve and with this evolution comes a tremendous degree of flexibility when it comes to design and deployment paradigms. SCS supports SOA by architecting the underlying features as independent service components that offer flexibly for interfacing with other applications for new value and for redundancy, scalability and flexibility.

What are the unique features of the SCS solution?

Based on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the universal standard for communications interoperability, SCS accelerates communications and collaboration between employees, partners and customers. This solution provides unified communications capabilities, including secure presence and instant messaging, integrated voice conferencing, unified messaging, single number reachability (i.e. Find Me/ Follow Me), desktop-based video conferencing, and tight integration with Microsoft Outlook and IBM Lotus Notes/ Sametime.

It also gives SMEs the freedom of choice. Rather than being locked into proprietary hardware and handsets, SMEs have the ability to build custom communications solutions that address their specific business needs. To facilitate deployment of open, interoperable solutions, SCS has been included as part of the Nortel Developer Program, which enables companies to conduct testing to attain recognition of the interoperability that exists between the developer’s product and SCS.

What are the verticals you are hoping to target with this solution?

The SCS solution spans multiple verticals, but we are mainly planning to target Retail, Hospitality, Media and Entertainment, Business Services and BFSI. The key attributes for the focus being: single or multiple sites, mobile employees, CIO as key technology decision maker (i.e. early adopter of technology), collaboration/ applications-focused working style, business need driving UC adoption etc.