Unified Communications and Social Networking in the EnterpriseUnified Communications and Social Networking in the Enterprise

Unified Communications and Social Networking: at first sight, it’s an odd combination. Odd because of the functionality overlap and also because it’s hard to see IT departments having anything to do with popular sites such as Facebook and MySpace. UC was designed for the enterprise environment, and social networking is a consumer development. One set of software operates via the intranet so it’s secure, the other runs on the Internet so it isn’t.

But the really significant difference is the uptake. UC is widely discussed and marketed, but deployment has been slow. Social networking, on the other hand, has been a runaway success. A Google search indicates that there are more than 53 million active users of Facebook, around 250,000 new users join every day and over 30% work as professionals, salespeople, executives, educators or are in technical careers. And of course there are many more sites, both international and national.

The baseline functionality of UC and social networking software is similar: IM and presence, click to call, Webcam, file transfer and the ability to group friends and colleagues. UC can do more, e.g., it works with an address book, but if it hasn’t been implemented in the workplace, then the younger end of the workforce is going to employ the alternative, whether IT like it or not. Recall that IT didn’t welcome PCs, wireless access points or IM. These were developed for consumers and entered the enterprise via the back door. Moreover, the consumer market is increasingly driving technology innovation: it’s much larger, so the rewards are much greater. Enterprises therefore have to accept the fact that the old top-down, centralized approach cannot compete with the new decentralized, Web-centric model.

Maybe you can put the 4-year delay down to the need for Mobile UC and/or Microsoft’s wish to drop the need for third-party support and deliver the whole enchilada. And maybe IT departments are not keen on being locked into desktop communications as well as desktop computing. Your guess is as good as mine. The key point is the failure to deliver the requisite functionality to corporate desktops, which means that OCS runs the risk of being overtaken by events. Look at the time it’s taken for UC to transition from hype to reality. I started writing about Microsoft’s solution in 2002 when Greenwich, a real-time communications server, was introduced. Later on it became LCS. Client software known as Istanbul appeared in 2004 but that was just an enterprise-class IM product and third-party support was needed to enable the kind of UC solution shown in Figure 1

Figure 1. IPC software and SDKs from Movial enable UC functionality on PCs and mobile devices. Presence status is indicated by the colour bars (green, yellow and orange). Communications media includes chat, sms, mms, voice and video.

ENTERPRISE 2.0

Andrew McAfee, Associate Professor, Harvard Business School, invented the term Enterprise 2.0, and his definition is “the use of emergent social software platforms within companies or between companies and their partners or customers.” Enterprise 2.0 embraces popular network sites such as Facebook and MySpace as well as social and network modifications to corporate intranets and other software platforms. And in order to be effective, it also involves social and network changes within the enterprise.

Enterprise 2.0 sites allow information to be shared and knowledge to be managed, both in- and outside the organization. This is enabled by tools such as blogs and wikis, social networking and tagging. The benefits are immediate and significant, e.g., these and other tools allow individuals to join team-centric projects, to control the process while they collaborate, and to share information and create networks.

Project groups transcend departmental and even company borders, and employees can be selected on the basis of their qualifications and personal skills. Thus, there is no traditional hierarchy: the structure is flat. In addition, the use of social software allows new communities to emerge — communities that comprise people who find each other because they have the same job function or the same skill set. And in a very large enterprise, people who are working on a similar project may find each other and as a result stop what would have been an expensive waste of resources.

There is nothing new about this concept: it goes back to the 1990s, when vendors started developing knowledge and content management solutions that were enterprise-wide, expensive, rigid and required significant technical resources. The new Web tools are simpler and much easier to use, and what’s easy to use gets used.

Individual employees, particularly the new, younger members, are driving this development. It’s a bottom up approach — one that enables flexible ways of communicating and collaborating. Web 2.0 technologies allow individuals to create almost any application for which there is a need. These apps can be created quickly, in line with a changing and challenging market environment, and usage is intuitive, since a browser is the user interface. There is no need to wait on the IT department, no need to consume precious resources, but involving IT on the deployment side allows the applications to be kept inside the DMZ. Connectivity to the outside world can then be managed in order to retain the company’s security and governance requirements.

MOBILE UC WITH A SIGNIFICANT DIFFERENCE

The next logical step would be to combine social networking with Mobile UC. And that’s exactly what is starting to happen. But before we explain, a review of what exactly Mobile UC is and isn’t:

Mobile UC is facilitated by the fact that mobile network operators know the presence status of all the subscribers on their network and the new smartphones have open operating systems as well as powerful computing and display resources. These devices can therefore download or embed application software. However, Mobile UC should not be seen as a subset of desktop UC. Mobility in the average workforce is around 40% and the figure is rising year on year in line with improved broadband services such as HSPA, WiMAX and LTE.

The combination of powerful handheld devices and broadband services has allowed the industry to deliver a mobile way of working that replicates the office environment and delivers the wireless Internet. In turn this means that the mobile variant leverages the value of early investments in desktop UC.

So how is Mobile UC being combined with social networking? Here’s one example. Movial is a Finnish software developer that markets white label, customized IP communications clients on virtually all mainstream platforms. The company was founded in 2001, so by mobile standards it’s well established: moreover it’s in Finland, which is where the whole mobility thing kicked off.

Movial has a comprehensive suite of IPC software as well as mobile applications and an SDK. In addition there is a presence engine that supports multiple presence protocols and unifies the presence needed for separate presence-enabled applications. In a nutshell, this enables the creation of solutions that pull everything together.

Social Communicator is a new addition to the company’s portfolio — one that provides the UC functionality as shown in Figure 2, with an impressive list of social networking features. They include: Internet calling, media content, UM, plus combined Web and video feeds for content sharing and real-time communication on mobile handsets, PCs, IP set-top boxes, and Internet tablet devices.

The business case for this development is the way it allows telcos to unify their core business of communication with social communities and Internet content on any device. Optimus, a mobile network operator that is part of the Orange Group, has deployed the company’s Communicator software. Their service includes a single phone number for both the mobile phone and the PC. This indicates that Movial can enable seamless wireline and wireless UC solutions that integrate with social networks and deliver a unified end user experience.

Figure 2 shows one user uploading a YouTube video clip to a friend. In addition this application enables voice and video calls, UM as well as sharing of social media content (YouTube, RSS News Feeds, Flickr, etc). This means that all services are enabled over the same user interface.

CONCLUSIONS

The relatively slow uptake of OCS within enterprises has allowed alternative technologies to enter the workplace via the back door. Social networking is being driven by the needs of savvy individuals, and attempts to ban it because of security concerns will fail. Instead, IT should encourage the development of robust Enterprise 2.0 applications. The next step — bringing authorized third parties into the process — adds an extra dimension, and that is the kind of functionality that social networking enables.

Organizations are starting to work this way and positive results are seen in short order. If you involve trusted, key customers and suppliers in the development of new products at an early stage, then the result is likely to be a product that stands a much better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. Mobile UC has become a practical proposition — see "Mobile UC is So European”. Movial’s technology not only raises the bar by combining UC with social network functionality, it also allows telcos to offer customized solutions to enterprises and thereby generate new revenue streams and retain their corporate customers.

Bob Emmerson is a freelance journalist based in the Netherlands.