Interface

“Unified communications have to be end-to-end”

Mitch Radomir, Head, Product & Solutions Marketing, Nortel, Asia-Pacific speaks on the various aspects of unified communications in an Indian context.

Unified communication can be defined as?

The key elements of unified communications include bringing together IP telephony and other enterprise communication channels such as instant messaging services. It has to be a collaboration between all the network-assisted architectures used by an enterprise.

It should be able to encompass all forms of call, multi-media and cross-media message-management functions. This in turn will help organisations to hone their operational productivity and lower operating costs.

Do you feel that dropping bandwidth prices will drive unified solutions’ adoption?

Well, the prices have come down. I still feel that broadband usage in India is low as compared to the rest of the world.

As the Indian market matures, enterprises will adopt unified solutions to take advantage of features including e-mail, instant messaging, and multi-media conferencing over IP.

How can unified communications help Indian enterprises reduce costs?

Business productivity can be achieved only if the entire system is designed and deployed end-to-end. Patching the product with an existing system or product will not help.

The architecture need to be analysed and the solution should be deployed based on need and requirement. The entire enterprise set-up from telephone to high-end applications needs to be deployed on IP.

—Dominic K