IBM, Microsoft: Bad economy good for UC

Out at VoiceCon San Francisco 2008, executives from IBM and Microsoft said that a bad economy is good for the adoption of unified communications.

While collaboration tools have been around for years, they need to be made simpler and more intuitive, said IBM's Bruce Morse, VP of UC and collaboration. UC, when done right, can make it easier to find the right people to collaborate with in order to make smarter business decisions more efficiently. A dash of social networking might help the adoption of UC within a corporate network.

Of course, what's UC without some cost-savings talk. Morse said by getting groups to work together, travel needs can be reduced and telephony costs can go down as well through reduction of call volume.

Remarkably, Microsoft agreed with IBM on the cost-savings benefits of UC. A spokesperson for Microsoft said businesses can cut costs by using UC conferencing and collaboration features to cut expensive business trips, while integrating communications into business applications can cut the time for tasks such as placing orders, bringing together health care teams, and enabling virtual offices.

Microsoft customers at Boeing and the Creative Artists Agency (CAA) in Los Angeles were brought out to testify to the benefits of UC. A Boeing convergence project manager asserted that UC implemented in home offices can displace other services and cut costs, such as getting rid of a desk phone and replacing it with a collaborative desktop, while the CAA's CIO said UC's broader communications tools provide more information to its agents.

For more:
- Network World on Microsoft saying UC is good. Article
- IBM also praises UC. Article.

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