Unified communications is coming to town… again – are you ready? For years companies have been offering unified communication systems as a way to get the right information to the right people at the right time, in the right form. Yet previous technologies struggled with helping the communicator find 
their intended targets, selecting the right form of media and then making sure that the target was reached. This is rapidly changing.
The two driving factors are GPS enabled mobile phones, and the untethering of these phones from the top down command & control structure where cell phone providers dictate what can be put on their phones, along with what kind of applications could be used over their networks. Apple and AT&T have shown us what is possible when individuals are allowed to harness the power of their phones.
Why are these two simple changes in the mobile landscape a game changer for unified collaboration?
First it brings all the promises of unified communication to fruition: it gives one enhanced, anywhere, anytime access to the corporate network, along with the data and resources that it holds, be it documents or human knowledge. Secondly, when designed correctly, this technology gives employees the ability to break out of the limited confines of email and allows greater flexibility in message type and delivery. The newest generation of phones have incredible integration of voice, video, pictures and text that never really took hold in the desktop world because it required too many peripherals. Now when you have an employee at a trade show, it is easy to send live video updates, or take pictures of the competition’s newest product line and all those subscribed to his ‘feed’ are instantly updated.
The productivity gains and efficiency of GPS systems have only begun to scratch the surface of their potential. Imagine a platform with 24/7 access to a query system based on the employees location and particular set of parameters that provides employees with up to the minute documents, tools, presentations and other tools when logging into the corporate network. The system filters the question and directs it to a target subset of experts in the enterprise who have expertise with the client the employee is at. The implications of GPS are endless, limited only by our imagination.
There are still a few challenges with GPS and the link to unified communications applications. The mobile application development field is still in its infancy, and many early adopters have flocked to the iPhone. Since many corporate users are just happy that they can get email on their blackberry, many corporations see this device more as a hip toy, than an enterprise friendly tool. The ability to access & view documents, run questions to experts in the field, post multimedia and have information follow you is something that will require a paradigm shift for corporations to realize that phones are capable of handling more than just their voice and text needs.
Even if it makes their life easier and more efficient, the vast majority of users are resistant to learning new programs. Which is why any unified communication software for mobile phones must be integrated with email, but not limited to email’s failings. This creates a tool that is familiar to the vast majority of workers, lowers user resistance and reduces the over all training cost.
The other major challenge to mobile phones becoming the center of the unified communication world is the vastly fractured OS and platform system that currently exists. This will whittle down over the next few years, but until then, unified communication providers either face high costs to develop applications for each major provider; or they hedge their bets and only provide support for one or two of the major players, limiting their market and their reach. This helps to make the adoption and creation of these systems a slow and unpredictable venture.
Although there is hope on this end also, security is the last major issue that will slow the adoption of this idea down. Many companies have been popping up in the last year that allow you to remotely wipe data off of a lost mobile phone. If the unified communication software limits the amount of data that can be downloaded to a device, along with providing the ability to shut off the information tap to a specific phone, one could guarantee that any data breach that did happen would have limited effects. As with the other factors, security again will get better and with time, the more forward thinking companies will realize that the productivity gains and convenience that these tools offer will out weigh the limited security risks.
In an ideal world, these unified communication devices will be applications that can be installed and updated remotely because of their constant connection to the Internet. Thus programs could be installed by sending an installation link through a text message, and when updates were needed they would notify the user of updates being installed at the end of their next session. This will be a major step toward mass adoption of software on mobile phones and we are starting to see of this with some of the newer phones and applications being created for them.
Overall, the mobile phone industry is heading in the right direction and it is only a matter of time before we see if the established companies in the unified communication field understand the significance of mobile phones in their overall game plan, or if a young upstart company can come in and fulfill the promises that the legacy players have never been able to. The benefits of making your phone the central repository for unified communication and collaboration has almost unlimited potential in reshaping the way that corporations gather and distribute data. The future will be interestingly mobile indeed.
