Innovation - the Heart of the Matter in Unified Communications

By Bob Preston

Today I spent the morning at a virtual CIO event – Leveraging Unified Communications across the Global Enterprise – hosted by Polycom via telepresence in their Executive Briefing Centers (EBCs) in Santa Clara, London, New York, and Sao Paulo. Moderated by Lane Cooper of Computerworld, over sixty CIOs from around the world came together in a virtual session to discuss Unified Communications (UC) with several panel members including Polycom CEO Andy Miller and CTO Joe Burton as well as IBM’s Director of UC & Collaboration Software, John Del Pizzo, and HB Communications VP of Technology, Ted Thompson. The key topic of discussion - why UC is quickly becoming a “must have” strategy for enterprises in this time of global change.

CIOs from around the world interact with Polycom CEO Andy Miller
and CTO Joe Burton, moderated by Lane Cooper of  Computerworld

I previously blogged about Unified Communications as a topic and collaboration strategy in April 2010 (The Intersection of Unified Communications and Collaboration).  As I listened to today’s discussion, however, I realized that innovation is the true “must have”. UC may be the way to get there, but my top take-away from today's event is that innovation is at the heart of the matter. Corporate leaders are beginning to radically rethink how to guide their companies into a new era of economic growth to maximize performance and stay ahead of the competition. Forward leaning executives with the passion to lead have a new opportunity to kick-start patterns of innovation within their organization to stimulate organizational transformation. Tapping the energy, enthusiasm, and power of human interaction to enable a culture of innovation is now THE business imperative for ALL organizations. Such a culture allows employees to break-free from their traditional ways of communicating in favor of continuous, rapid-fire shifts and adjustments to keep pace with the accelerating complexity of a global marketplace.

“Collaboration is what we do on daily basis, it’s just what we do, and it needs to be seamless," commented John Del Pizzo of IBM. "Integrating desktop and mobile devices, UC enabled collaboration becomes ubiquitous and will drive transformative and innovative work flow environments.”

As consumers we know there are many new ways for us to find our friends and family, keep in touch, share ideas and exchange information. Further, in our home and private lives mobility and visual communication through social media is the new norm. Simply put, as I heard throughout the panel discussion today, employees want these same consumer capabilities at work to communicate seamlessly and globally with customers, colleagues, and partners. Such seamless and unified methods of communication will help drive the innovation engine through employee empowerment, satisfaction, and motivation.


CIOs in New York (top row), Sao Paulo (middle row), and London
(bottom row) in live discussion on topic of UC via telepresence

Asked about the role of video conferencing within a UC strategy, Joe Burton of Polycom responded, “human latency reduction is the foundation of the business case for audio and visual communications. Innovation is a creative process - 80% of the brain's capacity is around visual processing. Having a high-definition, visual communication experience is critical to the creative process over distance. It doesn’t happen with voice communication alone but it will happen when a video connection is in the mix.”

“This is a marathon, not a sprint," said Andy Miller of Polycom in wrapping up the 2 hour event with final comments. "Open standards are the key so that audio and visual communications are agnostic to the platform the customer is running. We are now at a turning point, for example, by taking video conferencing from standalone room systems to full UC integration with IBM Lotus Sametime and other communication software applications.”

Innovation is the heart of the matter - it is the engine that will move organizations forward. Unified Communications is the underlying IT strategy to fuel that engine. Understand your business drivers and determine where steps toward UC can get your organization on the road to a higher level of innovation.  Work is what you do, not where you need to be.  Most organizations can get quick wins through even small levels of UC integration, immediately showing impact and creating an innovation snowball effect.

Related Links and Articles:

• Market for Unified Communications in North America Buoyant (TMCnet)
• Polycom and Samsung to Deliver Innovative Unified Communications Apps on Android-based GALAXY Tablet (Computerworld) 
• Polycom and Broadsoft Intros BroadCloud UC Cloud Solution for Web Conferencing (TMCnet)
• Polycom Accelerates Unified Communications Innovation (Computer Business Review)

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