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United Communications

7/1/2007

By Matt Villano

Coming Together

Top considerations for building a unified communications infrastructure.

IN MANY WAYS, unified communications (UC) is the Holy Grail in the world of campus telecommunications; everybody wants it, yet the phrase means something different to everyone. CT tackled this subject in the recent webinar sponsored by Applied Voice & Speech Technologies, “Ten Steps for Building an Affordable, Reliable Unified Communications Infrastructure”. In it, AVST President and CEO Hardy Myers spoke with CT Senior Contributing Editor Matt Villano about the process and challenges of building UC in higher ed. Following are highlights of their exchange, which could apply to any consideration of UC—AVST or otherwise.

WITH UNIFIED COMMUNICATIONS, a user’s e-mail inbox serves as a repository for e-mail, voicemail, faxed messages, and more, helping optimize business processes on campus.

What exactly is unified communications? The definition varies by manufacturer. For AVST, unified communications is defined as communications systems that are integrated in order to optimize business processes on campus. That means UC is an amalgamation of technologies—telephony, messaging, collaboration, and more.

At what stage are most colleges and universities in, implementing UC? We are seeing an acceleration in the replacement cycle for legacy voicemail and call processing systems (the Octels, PBXs, and Centigrams). Whatever brand of legacy system an institution might have, it likely has been in place for seven, eight, 10, 15 years. Most of this technology is in an end-of-life scenario, so customers are investing in new and more comprehensive solutions. For example, increasing mobility in today’s workforce is driving demand for unified messaging and speech-based applications— technologies users can access from anywhere.

If a school is ready to transition to UC, how can it maximize the value of its existing infrastructure? Many of AVST’s client schools, for instance, use our solution to support both a Centrex digital PBX environment and an IP telephony environment. As institutions continue to move more of their faculty and staff over to IP telephony, they tone down the digital PBX.

How important is it to evaluate your e-mail environment before tackling UC? You must understand what your alignment is, and then figure out how you can enhance it with the integration of unified messaging. We typically see higher education customers with multiple e-mail environments, and a need to change back and forth from one environment to another. Additionally, some of our larger customers have multiple e-mail systems on campus, and they wish to deliver a single solution.