UCC Success; More than TechnologyUCC Success; More than Technology

UCC success has more to do with the enterprise's staff and planning than the products.

Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) is the latest evolution of UC. Most vendors have some form, not all the same, of UCC in their portfolios. Enterprises evaluate the products more than they evaluate themselves, and yet UCC success has more to do with the enterprise's staff and planning than the products.The enterprise may own pieces of UCC; UC is typically managed as pieces, not as a whole function. UCC is collection of features and functions that will be used differently by various members of the enterprise. Not all users will need all pieces nor will the users have the same activity in UCC usage.

Selling UCC The first problem I see is obtaining the buy-in by the enterprise management. I am usually skeptical of the ROI calculations for IT projects. To me, the ROI is performed to get past the CFO for approval. I have surveyed many conference and seminar audiences and have learned that it is rare that the ROI is reviewed 2 to 3 years later to see if the calculations were on target.

UCC justifications have more to do with enterprise staff productivity, a hard thing to prove until you implement UCC. UCC is not a replacement technology like a new PBX. Ensure that you do your homework. Learn the business processes that UCC will support. Be as quantitative with real ROI numbers as possible. Be realistic, not overly optimistic about the financial benefits.

Last fall, I was surprised by the cost of vendors' proposed professional services they bid for UCC implementation. Talk to your vendors about the need for the professional services so that you are not under-funded. Under-funding leads to project cancellation. Management will probably consider UCC a failure because it cost more than planned, when it could be truly beneficial. UCC should be a business sell, not a technology sell.

Managing UCC I think there should be a UCC manager that pulls together the disparate pieces under one operation. The CIO/IT manager has to declare the ownership and assign the UCC authority and responsibility to one individual. This individual will have to interface with the network engineers and applications staff. All voice services would be under this individual's control. The UCC manager, not individual IT staff members, should have an unambiguous role to operate, change and update UCC. IT may have to be significantly reorganized to meet the UCC management and operational challenges.

Getting the User on Board Delivering UCC features and functions will have a cultural impact on the enterprise. UCC will change work methods, interactions, and will accelerate productivity. Training the users and their managers will be very important if UCC is to succeed as defined in the ROI. Make sure the end users and their managers are involved in the UCC planning and early operation. Pursue one department at a time, not the whole enterprise. Use the success of the first department as selling tool to bring in the other departments in phases.

There are Legal Implications UCC has legal implications as well. I wrote two blogs on eDiscovery, "Planning for E-Discovery" and "VoIP, E-Discovery and the Law" that presented a number of issues and recommendations. UCC planning should include the legal department. Should all users have access to all features and functions? I have one client that decided to limit UCC availability to deal with compliance regulations. I found a hospital that had a nurse using Skype video for medical work that was not controlled and did not meet HIPAA requirements. My opinion is that if it is communications in any electronic form, E-Discovery as well as other requirements will be applied to UCC. Plan for them and avoid the legal surprises.

Then there is the Infrastructure UCC will have a major impact on the network, servers and applications. Since UCC means productivity, then reliability and availability of the infrastructure will be crucial to the UCC success. Is your infrastructure up to it? Will it have to be available 7x24x365 because users will be working 24 hours a day? This does not leave time for fixes, upgrades and modifications. Is the IT group ready and organized for this continuous uninterrupted operation?

The second part of infrastructure is the network and server capacity. When VoIP calls are added to the network at about 80kbps per call, the impact per call is small. The enterprise can easily predict the voice call volume based on past experience. But video calls, especially telepresence at 5Mbps+ per call will produce some real headaches for the network architect and engineers.

UCC delivers more forms of communications that will be impacting the bandwidth and QoS of the network. Does the network engineer design an oversized network so calls will go through, or will the CFO require bandwidth reduction to reduce costs, resulting in user busy signals? The traffic patterns for UCC will have to be learned and the network and servers will have to be modified rapidly in response.UCC success has more to do with the enterprise's staff and planning than the products.