Unified communications What kind of animal is this?
Greetings to you, dear habrasoobschestvo. The next few articles of our corporate blog will be devoted to such a fashionable topic today as “Unified Communications” in the field of VoIP-technologies. I will try to lucidly explain what this beast is and what it is eaten with. I will also describe the experience of foreign and domestic providers of unified communications services.
Unified communications is not just a product, but rather a solution that consists of various elements, such as: call management, multi-channel numbers with the ability to record conversations, statistics and history, intelligent routing of incoming calls, call forwarding to any numbers, to including mobile, instant messaging services (ICQ, Skype), conferencing and software solutions to integrate all these elements into the company's business processes.
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Simply put, the basis of unified communications is the combination of all types of communications into a single whole at the program level. Let's just imagine the average employee of an average company. He certainly uses the phone, fax, email, ICQ and Skype. For all this, standard communications need at least 2 devices, and most often 3 are used: a separate phone, a separate fax and a separate computer. It also shows the essence of unified communications, how to ensure that all communication capabilities are combined under one solution and can be easily coordinated. I will give the simplest example taken from personal experience.
Fring is installed on my phone, of course, it cannot be considered as a complete solution based on unified communications, but its basics are perfectly visible. Through Fring, I have access to several of my accounts at once: icq, skype, SIP, twitter. People can contact me in any convenient way for them 24 hours a day. If there are no questions with ICQ and Skype, then SIP could be puzzling for many. In fact, everything is simple, through my own company I have issued myself a direct Petersburg number, which is registered with our company. Thus, a unique SIP-identifier is assigned to my SIP-client, which is tied to a direct number. If you suddenly receive a call to my St. Petersburg number, it will automatically redirect to my SIP number, so I can receive calls from all over the world for free, and more importantly, call anywhere in the world for a penny (the benefit of 3G Internet in St. Petersburg is almost everywhere).
To be honest, I sometimes do not understand why I should come to the office when the same office is on my mobile. Once a week, the mobile phone is synchronized with iCal on my poppy, as a result, all the planned cases are automatically displayed in the calendar on the mobile, all email is loaded onto the mobile in automatic mode and all possible methods of communication are combined under the Fring cap.
Of course, at this stage, solutions based on unified communications are not very popular, and this is more of a problem of not lagging technologies, but a purely human factor that prevents people from understanding the constantly changing IT environment. There are too many services offering “business process optimization”, “cost reduction”, etc., when in essence the main thing is lost - convenience and mobility.
I will be glad to hear the opinion of the habrasoobshchestvo (both positive reviews and criticism). This is my first experience of writing articles for Habra and I hope not the last. In the near future, wait for an article about the history of the emergence of UC, as well as an analysis of the proposed solutions of both Russian and foreign companies. Thanks to all. Your Alex.
Unified communications is not just a product, but rather a solution that consists of various elements, such as: call management, multi-channel numbers with the ability to record conversations, statistics and history, intelligent routing of incoming calls, call forwarding to any numbers, to including mobile, instant messaging services (ICQ, Skype), conferencing and software solutions to integrate all these elements into the company's business processes.
')
Simply put, the basis of unified communications is the combination of all types of communications into a single whole at the program level. Let's just imagine the average employee of an average company. He certainly uses the phone, fax, email, ICQ and Skype. For all this, standard communications need at least 2 devices, and most often 3 are used: a separate phone, a separate fax and a separate computer. It also shows the essence of unified communications, how to ensure that all communication capabilities are combined under one solution and can be easily coordinated. I will give the simplest example taken from personal experience.
Fring is installed on my phone, of course, it cannot be considered as a complete solution based on unified communications, but its basics are perfectly visible. Through Fring, I have access to several of my accounts at once: icq, skype, SIP, twitter. People can contact me in any convenient way for them 24 hours a day. If there are no questions with ICQ and Skype, then SIP could be puzzling for many. In fact, everything is simple, through my own company I have issued myself a direct Petersburg number, which is registered with our company. Thus, a unique SIP-identifier is assigned to my SIP-client, which is tied to a direct number. If you suddenly receive a call to my St. Petersburg number, it will automatically redirect to my SIP number, so I can receive calls from all over the world for free, and more importantly, call anywhere in the world for a penny (the benefit of 3G Internet in St. Petersburg is almost everywhere).
To be honest, I sometimes do not understand why I should come to the office when the same office is on my mobile. Once a week, the mobile phone is synchronized with iCal on my poppy, as a result, all the planned cases are automatically displayed in the calendar on the mobile, all email is loaded onto the mobile in automatic mode and all possible methods of communication are combined under the Fring cap.
Of course, at this stage, solutions based on unified communications are not very popular, and this is more of a problem of not lagging technologies, but a purely human factor that prevents people from understanding the constantly changing IT environment. There are too many services offering “business process optimization”, “cost reduction”, etc., when in essence the main thing is lost - convenience and mobility.
I will be glad to hear the opinion of the habrasoobshchestvo (both positive reviews and criticism). This is my first experience of writing articles for Habra and I hope not the last. In the near future, wait for an article about the history of the emergence of UC, as well as an analysis of the proposed solutions of both Russian and foreign companies. Thanks to all. Your Alex.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/58844/
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