Sprint: a carrier perspective on unified communications

Core UC Belief: The path to unified communications must be outlined by upper level management, and clear goals must be established to benchmark the process.

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Whenever a company goes out a limb to sell a product or service, it's usually a good sign to see them using the same wares they peddle. Sprint reportedly has deployed its own unified communications system in-house, to the tune of $6 million in annual savings, according to Steve Parrott, product development lead for Sprint managed services.

He said the internal deployment, like those of Sprint's customers, would not have been successful without a clear corporate position on how and for what purposes the technology would be used in the workplace. While other unified communications providers start with end-users, not unified communications, starts with the enterprise, and the enterprise's ability to provide a streamlined and effective product

Steve Coker, head of business market development for Sprint's wireline convergence division, said each enterprise has to outline their path and deploy various aspects that are the best fit for the organization, and then execute the strategy as an enterprise. He said Sprint has unique credibility as a service provider of unified communications solutions, because Sprint made these same decisions within its own organization, and has a roadmap for multi-year specific incremental benefits the deployment should bring.

"Every company's positioning for UC is different, as people deploy, different things are going to be important to different folks," Coker said. "As a telco, what can we best do in hosted and premise based UC deployments is to work with all the leading providers of hardware software components, IBM, Microsoft, Cisco, etc., and focus on being the best in class as a service provider. Though we use Exchange servers primarily, if you're predominantly a Cisco shop, we will work with what you use."

Steve Parrott also stressed the importance of mobility for unified communications, saying is simply doesn't work without it. He said a lot of service providers don't necessarily consider mobility a part of solution, but it's a concept that businesses get once they see their workers' increased productivity and flexibility using unified communications solutions with a mobility piece.

But Parrott said, more than feature sets and other proposed benefits of unified communications deployments, cost savings is the factor that resonates most with potential customers.

"When you cut through the noise, the larger the enterprise, the more of a use case there is for a UC deployment," Parrott said. "It's not just the size of the corporate user base, but it's what a company's telecom spend looks like. If you're able to extend mobile solutions and eliminate voice T1s that are delivering calls in the process, in addition to the productivity gains and collaboration advantage, a UC deployment makes sense."