Information Week's survey on the promise of greater productivity from Unified Communications is sure to provide insightful results when they appear. But we felt the researchers revealed a bit of bias when their invitation email read "... by blending presence, IM, voice, and video with one another, and increasingly, with Service Oriented Architectures (SOAs). Do you buy that?"
Communicado for one doesn't entirely buy the notion that UC is mostly about projects to integrate the Unified Communications stack including VoIP into SOA-enabled enterprise applications such as SAP and various flavors of CRM. We look forward to seeing if the survey will bear us out there.
Our one regret about the thoughtful Information Week survey is the huge opportunity missed in not asking respondents: "Are you getting ready to manage Unified Communications because your next Microsoft Office upgrade will enable UC for everyone using Outlook?"
We believe the most immediate impact of Unified Communications for most enterprises will arise from users leveraging the new Unified Communications elements available once Office Communications Server (OCS) is installed.
Many IT strategists will breathe a sigh of relief upon reading how many enterprises, like their own, are choosing not to unleash the complexity of Unified Communications with ambitious SOA integration projects. We just hope they aren't surprised by the user benefits and IT stresses that will be thrust on them as Microsoft slips UC capabilities into their shops. SOA or not, here UC comes.
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