Much of the focus on UC centres around the complexity of system integration, especially with large, geographically disperse platforms. Getting UC to work seamlessly is very important, but the need for management doesn’t lie solely with the deployment phase. It is also important to be able to maintain the myriad of data sources across a complex set of UC services on a day-2 basis. For example, adding or deleting a UC service may demand feature and settings configuration on not just the application server, but also the central directory, the IP-PBX, the routing engine and the gateways, even other UC applications and enterprise applications. In other words, when maintaining UC services, many network elements and applications need to be configured.
Secondly, the need to upgrade (day-3) one element in a UC network architecture often requires integration across all the other network elements. This is exacerbated with multiple UC elements.
In addition, the day-2 team is often not the same as the day-1 team in most organizations. And there is rarely a sufficient level of communication between day-1 and day-2/3 teams, which means day-2 teams have to learn through trial and error experience.
By managing the entire lifecycle of each and every UC application and service is required to ensure a seamless delivery of service to end users and customers alike.