Cisco Unified Communications

Online Digital Solutions www.odsi.co.uk

White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

Online Digital Solutions 2

Table of Contents

What is Unified Communications? ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................3

What makes up a Unified Communications solution? .........................................................................................................................................................................................3

Is Unified Communications new?............................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6

How to get Unified Communications?.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................6

How to use Unified Communications for business ................................................................................................................................................................................................7

Role of Unified Communications in business............................................................................................................................................................................................................7

Future of Unified Communications................................................................................................................................................................................................................................8

The Right Time to get UC..........................................................................................................................................................................................................8

Why Cisco?.............................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................9

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Online Digital Solutions 3

What is Unified Communications?

Unified Communications (UC) empowers you with the ultimate

communications tool by converging and integrating all forms of

communications, networks, systems and business applications – on

any device in any location, resulting in improved productivity and

efficiency by enabling you to communicate effectively.

But what does that mean?

For you, it means communicating more effectively. Unified

Communications:

• Empowers you to find the people you want to contact from rich,

detailed directories

• Allows you to know where people are and take action based on the

results

• Encompasses all forms of communication from voice, instant

messaging, video and collaboration

• Automates your communications by intelligently utilizing your

presence: forward your calls when away from the desk,

inform callers you’re in a meeting and notify them of your return

• Integrates into your business applications and processes and

provides your organization new ways to function.

Unified Communications will totally change the way you work!

So what makes up a Unified Communications solution?

Unified Communications can be broken down into a number of core

features:

Today's User

As silly as it sounds, it really is all about you. It is about empowering

individual users to take control of their communications. By presenting

user intuitive interfaces and automating mundane tasks, it allows users

to concentrate on their day job.

Unified Communications is one of the few technologies that is

applicable across the entire organization. Everyone from senior

executives to productivity workers can benefit from Unified

Communications.

Technology Messaging

Cisco's view of Unified Communications - Multiple paths of communications centered around you.

Presence

Since it is all about you, it is most importantly about securely and

reliably identifying you. User identification is imperative in creating

a reliable communications system. This requires the integration and

possible consolidation of a range of personnel data and authentication

sources. The end benefit to your organization is a simplification in your

employees’ personal data and the potential to move to a single point

of data entry. Imagine the benefit of entering a new employee’s details

once and automatically enabling access to all of your crucial business

applications. You can even program a desk phone, send a welcome

e-mail or enable an employee’s security card and sending a welcome

email. With Unified Communications and the right partner – anything is

possible.

Telephony

Cisco is the leader in telephony – this is our core strength. We have

been connecting people with traditional and IP phone systems. We

pride ourselves on giving our customers migration paths forward

wherever possible, and our Unified Communications offerings are no

exception. Customers with traditional PBX’s up to ten years old can

take advantage of Unified Communications, either directly on their

existing hardware or with minor upgrades to PBX capacity – which

other vendor can do that?

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Online Digital Solutions 4

Cisco’s range of telephony spans the entire gamut:

• Traditional analogue phones for wall mounting and redundancy.

• Digital phones with displays and line keys for accessing enhanced

telephony.

• IP phones offering everything you get on a Digital phone but with all

the advantages of IP.

• SIP based phones (Extended or standards based).

• Soft phones for remote workers and road warriors.

• Large screen phones for running custom XML applications.

• Video phones, for point-to-point video communications.

Presence is a fundamental change in the way we communicate. It

has been around for quite some time in the telephony world, with

switchboard operators knowing if people are on the phone. However,

presence information was really about the phone, not the person.

The core concept of Unified Communications is about the person, so

Presence provides rich information about you.

• Are you currently interacting with your PC, or are you away from your

desk?

• Are you in a meeting and what time does the meeting end?

• Are you on a phone – desk phone, mobile phone, wireless phone?

• Are you in a conference – voice, video, application sharing?

• Are you busy?

• Where is your computer? LAN segment, wireless LAN location?

• Where is your phone? Wireless location, nearest cell tower?

The combination of all of these answers allows us to change the way

we work. Imagine you receive an email from a colleague, and you

could tell instantly that the colleague is currently in a meeting and not

back for two hours, would you do something different? Would you call

another colleague who you know is at their desk or would your reply to

the email? Presence enables you to make these types of decisions and

helps you get your job done more quickly.

Presence is great but it needs to be everywhere. Unified

Communications allows you to:

• See presence information from your desktop.

• Inform callers that you are currently in a meeting and will return at a

specified time.

• Automatically forward a call to your mobile if your spouse rings while

you are in a meeting, but forward all other callers to your voice mail.

• Look up a contact and see the real-time status of colleagues.

• See the status of co-workers when you ring someone on the phone.

Imagine seeing ‘Out to lunch’ on the phone display, ‘Back at 2:00

PM’ – you will know exactly when to reach someone or expect a call

back.

• Be notified when a customer you need to get in contact with is at

their desk or when your colleague from across the globe signs in - it

makes global communications so much easier.

Presence information presented in the right place at the right time will

save you hours of wasted time by reducing voice mail tag and missed

communications, which enables you to increase productivity and

efficiency.

Messaging

Instant Messaging provides a new way for users to communicate.

You can effectively hold multiple simultaneous conversations, and it

provides a level of immediacy that email does not without being as

obtrusive as a phone call. With an enterprise grade Instant Messaging

system, all of your communications are secured and encrypted to

protect your security. All messages can be logged for auditing and

compliancy purposes. If you choose to federate with external parties,

messages between organizations can also be encrypted end-to-end

to ensure your privacy is never compromised. With the steady flow

of generation Y’s into most organizations, it is important to note that

Instant Messaging is a common and familiar way to communicate, and

will become a standard form of communication.

Cisco has a phone for every purpose

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Online Digital Solutions 5

Instant messaging can be critical in your Contact Centers where many

consumers are now opting for web chat to talk to operators. This can

drastically increase the number of calls your operators can handle at

the same time, and provide a familiar and reliable communications

method to those who prefer to type rather than talk.

Instant Messaging can also play an important part in your business

applications. What if your back end systems could send an Instant

Message to the most appropriate person, based on the user’s status?

Or, what if your users could Instant Message your back end systems

to find out critical data without the need to start up a new application?

For example, a user could send an instant message to ‘flights’, from a

mobile device while walking through a concourse, simply providing a

flight number, and your back end systems could reply with the arrival

times, scheduled departure times and flight details.

The final key to Instant Messaging is the need for access to it wherever

you go. With clients on your desktop, messaging available from your

desk phone, access via the web, and even clients for your mobile

phones and PDA’s, access to instant messaging from anywhere is now

a reality.

Conferencing

The conferencing and collaboration market has matured greatly over

the years, moving from expensive room-to-room video conferencing

to streamlined, multiparty, web-based conferencing. There are many

options available and each with its own benefits. The best conferencing

and collaboration strategy is usually a combination of methods to

achieve the best business benefit.

Dedicated video phones (usually SIP based) can be used to provide

desk-to-desk video conferencing. They can be a low cost option

enabling quality video and audio.

Soft-phone technology provides everything you would expect from

a high quality business phone, but also incorporates a dedicated

conferencing and collaboration solution, allowing users to perform

point-to-point video conferencing with application sharing and instant

messaging.

Room-to-room solutions allow for high quality video for important board

meetings. These solutions pride themselves on the highest quality

audio and video and can be used to hold meetings with multiple parties

across the globe.

Web-based conferencing allows you to hold meetings with large

numbers of participants all from within a standard web browser. These

services can be either hosted externally or internally and allows you

to hold scheduled or ad-hoc meetings, with high quality voice and

application sharing.

From room-based conferencing, to real-time communications with

hundreds of attendees across the globe – Cisco knows conferencing

and collaboration and has the solutions to fit your particular needs.

Unified Communications is powerful, but needs to be mobile. You

should be able to communicate from anywhere and through multiple

devices. With current day Unified Communications solutions, you can

now communicate with almost the same functionality you have at your

desk from an internet café, in a hotel room or through your mobile

phone/device.

With Cisco IP telephony, moving desks is simple. You can log your

phone in anywhere and your entire telephony profile moves with

you. If you take your laptop, then with a VPN solution, your complete

communications solution is always available.

From an internet café, most services are available from a web browser

- unified messaging, instant messaging, and collaboration. With Unified

Communications, you will feel more connected than ever.

Messaging

Often Unified Messaging is used to describe voice mail that is delivered

to an inbox, be it, Outlook®, Notes®, Group Wise®, etc… but there is so

much more to Unified Messaging.

So what are some of the key components that make up a Unified

Messaging solution?

• Most offices have faxes scattered around, but with Unified

Messaging you can have users fax directly from their PC’s - even

receive faxes straight into their inbox!

• Receiving your voice mail as an attachment in your inbox is one

thing, but with Unified Messaging you gain control. You will not only

be able to play that message in your email client, you can get it to

play on your desk phone, or even get it to call you on another phone

number and play the message. Play it at normal speed, faster or

slower, you choose. Skip forward or back, then reply with a voicemail

or email, or even forward the message on to others.

• Unified Messaging takes your current presence status and ensures

your callers are up to date. ‘I am sorry, Fred is not in the office, and

will not be returning until 8:30am tomorrow’ – not because you had

to record it, but because the system knows where you are and

speaks it.

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Online Digital Solutions 6

• Interactive voice response provides you the flexibility of working

when you just can’t get a network connection. Call and actually talk

to your Unified Messaging system. Ask for what is your next

appointment, tell the system you are running 10 minutes late and

have it email all attendees with your voice message attached, search

your corporate directory, listen to your emails and send voice replies.

Imagine doing all of that in a taxi heading to the airport.

Unified Messaging has come a long way and it now provides a rich user

interface without complex training and instructions.

Equipment

So you’ve now heard how great Unified Communications is, but to

provide the best solution you also need high quality devices and end

points to ensure you get the highest quality performance and portability.

Laptops and desktops now carry dedicated, high quality audio devices

capable of rivaling some home theatre systems. These devices now

have enough processing power and audio / video capabilities to provide

seamless Unified Messaging.

Cisco desk phone handsets provide the perfect audio device for

high quality voice and reliable operations. In their IP variant, you get

the same high quality device with the flexibility of mobility.

Mobile devices are becoming more powerful with advanced features

including 4G and wireless LAN. Soft phone technology means that dual

mode handsets are here now and will only continue to get better. You

can access most things you have on your desktop with very little loss in

function.

Is Unified Communications new?

Unified Communications is a new name for a group of technologies

that have been around in different combinations for quite some time. In

the last few years these building blocks have evolved and a new name

has emerged. Most importantly it doesn’t mean that to access Unified

Communications you don’t have to throw away everything and start

again – in most cases you can leverage your existing communications

infrastructure and enable some truly amazing ways to communicate.

How to get Unified Communications? One of the largest misconceptions around Unified Communications

is that it is simply a product or a number of products, whereas it is a

complex solution that needs to be tailored to your organization in order

for you to get the best business benefits. This is where Cisco excels.

Not only do we have a wide range of Unified Communications

Solutions to help your organization, we have a network of Authorized

Associates trained to help you implement it. This is done by engaging

you in a number of crucial steps.

• Scoping allows Cisco’s trained Business Analysts to understand

your business drivers and find ways in which a Unified

Communications solution can solve your critical business needs.

• Technical architects design a secure, robust solution that meets your

requirements at a budget that you can afford.

• Any unique business requirements can be developed into a tailored

solution, allowing you to customize your investment to gain the

greatest business success.

• Trained installation staff will perform the implementation, providing

you with a complete, working system including all relevant training

– everything you need to make the most of your Unified

Communications system.

• All implementations are supported by Cisco – a global leader in

telecommunications and our network of Authorized Associates,

giving you access to trained support staff across North America.

And throughout the entire process, Cisco's Authorized Associates

and project managers ensure your project is delivered on-time and

on budget.

• Personalized greetings are powerful – and with Unified Messaging

you can play different messages based on the callers’ identity, or

even control the call flow. A key customer is calling and you are in

a meeting, forward to your mobile. A colleague calls while you are

in a meeting, take a message.

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

Online Digital Solutions 7

How to use Unified Communications for BusinessUnified Communications is a wide range of solutions that can

totally change the way people communicate. To ensure your Unified

Communications deployment is successful we recommend you follow

these simple steps.

Identify your key components

Determine the key components you want to deploy that will provide

your business with key benefits. Do not implement everything at once.

Identify your key users

Identify a group of ‘open’ users that will get the most business benefit

from a trial. Pick people who work together but preferably do not sit

together.

Train

Provide adequate training to the users and ensure they see and

understand the benefits. Support these users throughout the trial.

Integrate

Integrate the trial into standard business practices - this will make it

easier for users to adopt. Back up the deployment with realistic but

reasonable SLA’s.

Deploy business wide

Deploy the solution organization-wide. Advertise the solution to your

entire organization, selling them on the benefits and the way it will

improve their business day. Your trial group will evangelize the solution

and they will move quickly to get others they work with involved in the

official release. Unified Communications will snowball quickly as the

word gets out.

Repeat

Once a wave of Unified Communications is deployed, consider the

next best component and continue through the process until your

organization is truly unified.

Role of Unified Communications in business Once you begin to use Unified Communications, it will quickly

move from a luxury to a main stream necessity. With this in mind, all

deployments of UC should be considered business critical, so think

about the way it will be deployed, supported and maintained.

Cisco has monitoring and maintenance solutions to ensure your entire

Unified Communications solution is maintained and running at optimal

performance.

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723

The time is now

There has never been a better time to implement Unified

Communications and all of the benefits that your organization can

achieve.

• Reduced administration

Improved processes

Reduction in communications costs

•

Reduction in voice mail tag

• Lower cost of ownership

•

•

Online Digital Solutions 8

Future of Unified CommunicationsNo one can predict the future, but at Cisco we are looking forward to

ensure that solutions we provide to you today will work well into the

future. Here are a few things that Cisco sees in the world of Unified

Communications.

No one can predict the future, but at NEC we are looking forward to ensure that solutions we provide to you todaywill work well into the future. Here are a few things that NEC sees in the world of Unified Communications.

MaintenanceUnified Communications not onlymeans bettercommunications,in a lot ofcases it means , a

properly designed and implemented Unified Communications solution should save your company time and money in administration.

The time is nowThere has never been a better time to implement Unified Communications and all of the benefits that your organization can achieve.

• Lower cost of ownership• Reduced administration• Improved processes

• Reduction in communications costs• Reduction in voice mail tag

Why NEC?

TelephonyPhones will become increasingly intelligent. Soft-phones will become more user-accepted and become available on more devices. Users will consolidate on the number of devices they need.

Presence Presence information will become richer allowing you to know a person’s location and status on multiple devices, in multiple applications. This information will be used more and more to control business processes. Presence will extend to all facets of home and business life, phones, cars, trucks, rooms, not just traditional IT devices – all unified to provide integrated business benefit.

Instant Messaging

Business Applications will respond with IM. IM will incorporate voice integration to allow for hands-free IM. Federation will become more widely used. Federation will become an expectation, with companies making it mandatory to federate if you want to do business. Business transactions will be performed over IM.

Conferencing and Collaboration

Multi-party conferencing across the web will become more common, relieving the need for travel. Bandwidth costs reduction means higher quality video and audio. Application sharing will become seamless - available on any device, 4G phones, conference rooms, web, and car consoles.

Mobility

Virtualization will continue at its current rapid pace. Access will be available everywhere with seamless handover of

profiles. Everything available on any device – with little compromise.

Unified Messaging

Unified Messaging will approach voice mails high enterprise penetration. UM will improve productivity by utilizing downtime

during travel. UM becomes your off-line voice center providing access to emails, presence, messaging, and business applications. Users will expect a single UM for all devices, desk phone, home phone, and mobile phone.

sales@odsi.co.ukOnline Digital Solutions

+44 (0) 121 314 9723karen@odsi.co.uk

+44 (0) 121 314 9723 www.odsi.co.uk

Cisco Unified Communication White Paper

+44 (0) 121 314 9723