Unified communications is all the rage in telecom, so naturally there's a down side. That would be bandwidth consumption. Network General Corp., a San Jose, Calif., quality-of-service provider released a study this week demonstrating how unified comms will increase pressure on an already crowded information Super traffic jam.
The idea behind unified comms is simple: to fold voice, instant messaging, texting, email and other forms of electronic communications into one application. That way, road warriors can check fixed line voicemail via text from a mobile handset, for example. Several big players, including Microsoft, Cisco, Siemens and Verizon are busking the unified comms market, which is starting to take off as businesses adopt the necessary VoIP systems.
In a survey of 576 Network General customers, 75 percent estimated a quarter of their network traffic over the last three months consisted of unified comms. Nearly 40 percent said they'd had software problems after implementing unified comms, while 20 percent weren't as certain of the source of similar problems. Only 9 percent of those who responded said they didn't have a unified communications system. Key to successful deployments is adequate planning and a very agreeable IT administrator.
For more:
- The Network General summary of its survey is here [1]
Links:
[1] http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070827005273&newsLang=en