Before discussing the importance of service delivery and management, first we must understand the role that unified communications (UC) plays in today’s business environment. UC is essentially about improving a user's productivity and a company’s business processes through improved communications and collaboration. Beyond traditional voice features, UC applications include a growing list of applications such as unified messaging, presence, mobility, audio/video/web conferencing and collaboration tools.
There are four levels of UC:
1. Personal UC – where individual productivity is derived from integrating communications to desk top applications (e.g. click to dial, mobility and presence-aware directory services)
2. Collaborative UC – supports collaborative and team activities, to improve the productivity of workgroups, especially in ad hoc activities (e.g. document sharing and web collaboration)
3. Enterprise UC – Improves performance of the enterprise or division through integrating UC into business processes (e.g. linking presence and mobility into business applications)
4. Synergistic UC – Leveraging UC across the whole organization, changing the way that a company does business (e.g. decision making can be pushed down the management chain to subject matter experts, without losing control)
Read More: Staying Ahead of the Game with UC