ANTenna Blog

Unified communications promise to deliver substantial productivity improvements, but their acceptance has been hampered by the significant integration work that they usually require. Recently, vendors have begun delivering more plug-and-play systems, which should appeal to small and medium businesses.

Unified communications systems are designed to take advantage of the recent push by businesses to Voice over IP (VoIP). Once voice and data applications share the same network transport and data format, they can be blended. Theoretically, company productivity improves because unified communications streamline information exchanges. If a manager used a VoIP phone to try to reach an employee, the system would hunt the person down and use the appropriate communications mechanism (say pinging his or her Instant Messaging system if the person was on the Internet) to find the employee and let him or her know who was calling.

Because they touch upon so many different types of devices, unified communications solutions often require that customers jerry rig hardware, software, and middleware to get these applications running, which means they are hard to deploy and maintain. To try and address that issue, Avaya, which has been a leading provider of VoIP systems to small and medium businesses, announced a new line of unified communications applications. Rather than the typical horizontal system, the company delivered six vertical modules: one specifically for small businesses; teleworkers and mobile workers; home call center agents; branch offices; retail stores; and banks.

In addition to taking up a lot of time, unified communications’ integration work often drives up pricing, another bugaboo with these solutions. Avaya said its products cost about 15 cents a day, which translates to a few hundred dollars annually. Though lower than many traditional systems, the cost may still be too high for small and medium businesses. Analysts have speculated that unified communications sales will not rise dramatically until vendors reduce product pricing to the $25 to $50 per user per year range.

Even though Avaya has been a leading voice communications supplier, the company has been struggling to stay afloat in the highly competitive network equipment market. In October 2007, the vendor was acquired by Silver Lake and TPG Capital, companies that specialize in corporate turnarounds. Avaya has been reorganizing its business, and observers expect it to emerge as a company focused more on voice applications, such as unified communications, and less on voice hardware, such as VoIP switches, which have historically been its foundation.

Avaya’s new product line underscores the fact that unified communications vendors understand the difficult in deploying their systems and are taking steps to make it easier for small and medium businesses. With the company in the throes of a reorganization, buying products from them does present a significant risk, one small and medium need to weigh when examining whether or not it is now time to roll out a unified communications system.

How much interest does your company have in unified communications? How much would you be willing to pay for it? $1,000 per user? $500? A few hundred dollars? $100? $50, $0? What have your dealing with Avaya been like recently? Would you give its reorganization positive, negative, or mixed reviews?