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December 14, 2009
Guest Blogger: When Social Media Meets Unified Communications - Dan Jacobson
As part of my discussion with the Seamless Enterprise bloggers, we chatted about the enterprise, or IT, side of social media. We agreed that social media is changing how we work – and even driving the type of networks companies implement, such as unified communications. Some may not recognize unified communications as social media, but if you look at its capabilities, it’s about bringing the enterprise together into the Now. With UC, corporate America can be part of the social media revolution.
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When Social Media Meets Unified Communications
By Dan Jacobson
Uniting social media and Unified Communications (UC) is essential if an enterprise wants its people to be able to collaborate whenever and wherever they need to. But because UC is not always the clearest of terms, let’s start with a UC definition from a fellow guest blogger and colleague Steve Parrott:
“UC is the integration of wireless, wireline and collaboration solutions enabling a business and their end users to control how, where and when communication occurs through a consistent interface regardless of mode or access method. An effective UC deployment provides the business simplicity through common end-user interfaces, value through significantly improved network and IT infrastructure efficiency, and productivity in improving interactions between users.”
My own super-simple version of this is that UC is how we enable connectivity anywhere and anytime, in order for users to drive business value. Tie that to social media, and it leverages one of the greatest benefits of UC, which is collaboration. UC allows users to be fully aware of each other’s status and location and to instantly get into contact using the best means available at that moment. It may be a text if someone’s in a meeting, a mobile call if they’re away from their desk, or an on-the-fly video meeting if that is what is needed and if all the parties are available.
One of the key ways social media can enhance UC – and vice versa – is through presence and location. When you look at Twitter, for example, it’s all about where I am and what I am doing right now. That’s a function of presence and location. On the corporate side, if I know you’re in a meeting and unavailable, I won’t waste time trying to contact you, and will know to try you later. If I can establish that you and the other members of my team are all available, we can quickly arrange a collaborative conference to complete a project.
Sure, some of this can be done today via emails and calendar updates, but presence makes it all happen faster and more efficiently. Also, social media tools such as corporate wikis or Facebook-style intranet features can make the information that we need for our collaborative conference much more available. And with UC, a key part of which is mobile integration – the blending of mobile and wired networks – these are accessible anywhere.
No effective enterprise social media initiative is going to succeed without a heavy dose of mobility. People – particularly the front-line people who are critical to making their companies immediately responsive to what goes on in the Twittersphere and blogosphere – just don’t work that way anymore. They are on the move, and they need to be able to access and engage social media wherever they are. For them, mobility is truly the foundation of the State of NOW, and UC extends the benefits of that mobility and the collaboration it enables throughout the organization.
Dan Jacobson is guest blogging on behalf of Sprint’s Seamless Enterprise blog (seamlessenterprise.com), which focuses on unified communications, convergence and related enterprise issues.
Posted by jeff on December 14, 2009 01:28 PM | Permalink
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