Transcript Unified communication v2

Unified Communications
Submitted by
Parminder Kaur
• Unified communications (UC) is the integration of real-time
communication services such as instant messaging (chat),
presence information, telephony (including IP telephony),
video conferencing, call control and speech recognition
with non-real-time communication services such as unified
messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail,SMS and fax). UC is
not a single product, but a set of products that provides a
consistent unified user interface and user experience across
multiple devices and media types.
• UC also refers to a trend to offer Business process
integration, i.e. to simplify and integrate all forms of
communications in view to optimize business process and
reduce the response time, manage flows, and eliminate device
and media dependencies.
• UC allows an individual to send a message on one medium and
receive the same communication on another medium. For
example, one can receive a voicemail message and choose to
access it through e-mail or a cell phone. If the sender is online
according to the presence information and currently accepts calls,
the response can be sent immediately through text chat or video
call. Otherwise, it may be sent as a non real-time message that
can be accessed through a variety of media.
Unified Communications and Collaboration
Simplify Working Together
Pervasive
capabilities
for where and
how people
work
Who is it for?
Unified communications is very useful for knowledge workers,
information workers, and service workers alike, many of whom
may cross the lines between the three sectors on a daily or hourly
basis, depending on the task and the client. With an increasingly
mobile workforce, businesses are rarely centralized in one location.
Unified communications facilitates this on-the-go, always-available
style of communication.
With a completely hosted UC solution, communication is circular
rather than linear. In other words, a user can determine the most
efficient form of communication for each situation. A user can
instant message, call, email, video chat, or use on-line
collaboration within a single solution. No longer is a phone call
just a phone call. Easily start a videoconference call with a
coworker and have a question asked and answered in seconds
rather than minutes
As the hosted IP communications market continues to grow, more
service providers are integrating more capabilities to traditional
hosted telecom solutions - including UC integration with the full suite
of Microsoft products that allows for a truly hosted UC environment
where an IP phone system fully integrates with your email, voicemail
and OCS - all in one model. Alteva was the first hosted VoIP provider
to provide a completely hosted UC platform powered by Broadsoft
and Microsoft.
Affordable Communications System for Your Business
For a business to communicate effectively with suppliers and customers
in today’s competitive business environment, you need ready access to
information, updated in real time. Businesses can collaborate more
effectively and problem-solve like never before. The Cisco Smart Business
Communications System (SBCS) is an all-in-one networking and
communications solution that will enable you to do just that.
This solution supports flexible deployment options, a wide array of IP
phones, public switched telephone network (PSTN) interfaces, and
Internet connectivity
Some of the specific features UC can bring to a business?
A voice-enabled UC solution can quickly help organizations save money by
reducing a variety of costs, including service fees and charges, travel expenses,
messaging costs, telephony and audio conferencing charges, operation costs,
communications system costs and disaster recovery capabilities.
Additional benefits of Hosted UC include:
Hosted or cloud-based solutions average a 75% reduction in startup expenses,
management time by 90%, compared to an on-premise PBX system - bringing the
cost of a new system from $2000/user down to $250-$350/user.
Business Continuity: Direct access to redirect calls or relocate your entire business
in the event of a storm or disaster
Mitigate Technology Obsolescence - New features and functionality made
available without costly upgrades, elimination of maintenance fees and costly
moves, adds and changes.
• Scalability: Easily add and remove users as your business expands and contracts
to fit you business needs.
• Consolidation: One vendor to manage and one bill to pay for Local, Long
Distance, Exchange, OCS, SharePoint & Internet.
• Improve Employees Efficiency and Customer Satisfaction: salespeople, remote
workers and mobile executives can do business from any location and never miss
a call or message. Features such as messaging and collaboration, answering your
office phone from your cell phone, have voicemails show up as an emails, find me
follow me, call accounting, etc. drastically improve productivity.
• Call savings through utilisation of WAN links effectively
Jetstar upgrades unified communications platform
Jetstar is upgrading its unified communications (UC)
environment as part of a new whole-of-company approach
towards technology and mobility
Speaking at a media lunch in Sydney this week, Jetstar CIO,
Stephen Tame, said the upgrade will affect Jetstar’s head
offices and executives from December this year.
http://www.pcrush.com/product/IP-Phones/179263/CiscoUnified-IP-Conference-Station-7936-VoIP-Phone
http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2009/prod_
110809b.html
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How it can help your business
•
Reduce Costs and Improve Business Results
With the economic crisis and unstable energy prices, corporations are taking a hard look at cutting costs,
while maintaining their competitive edge by transforming ideas into value and delivering to their
customers. Unified communications help organizations reduce operating costs of travel, telecom and IT,
while enabling them to improve business outcomes in a more sustainable way.
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Solution Components
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Unified communications is a multi component system that is implemented on a company’s existing IP
Network infrastructure. The components of a typical unified communications deployment include;
Components
IP Network An IP Network is a network of interconnected cables over which the Internet Protocol is run
allowing devices connected to the network to communicate with each other IP Telephony Server An IP
telephony server is an appliance that replaces the traditional PABX system but instead of dedicated
copper wires connected to each device the server makes use of an IP network such as your local LAN or
even the Internet, to send and receive data packets to the connected device. The data packets can
contain pure data or they can just a likely contain snippets of the spoken voice which have been digitized
so that it can be transmitted over the network Voice Mail Server A voicemail server is an appliance that
store telephone messages. In legacy systems this device was usually limited in ways in which the end
user could collect their messages. Primarily communications were over a voice network where users
dialled a number to connect to their systems. Today this has changed and now messages can be collected
from mobiles, email and even websites. Voicemail servers used in these solutions are typically Microsoft
Exchange 2007 or Cisco Unity Web Conferencing Server Getting together with a bunch of your peers
who are spread all over the world is in essence what a Web conferencing server facilitates. A typical a
web conferencing server resides in a central location and combines desktop sharing and voice sessions
from participating users. Cisco Meeting Place Express is typically the software running on the server
and providing this functionality Presence Server A Presence server provides real-time reachabily
information for any user on the server. You can see the users status (e.g. available, on the phone, in a
meeting) and the best method to reach them (e.g. desk phone, mobile phone, email, instant messaging)IP
Phones IP Phones look much like traditional analogue phones but have one important difference.
Instead fo been plugged into a dedicated copper wire they can be connected to any IP network. This
means that you are not limited by the availability of your office network but can use this anywhere that
you have access to the Internet. It also means that only one type of cabling i.e. cat 5 or cat 6 is required
in your offices
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INNOVATION
• My innovation is to install or apply
Unified Communication in Hospitals
and Small Business also.
Virtualisation
For small business- VIRTUALISATION
http://www.networkworld.com/reviews/2010/111110virtual-office.html
http://www.generatione.com.au/solutions/platforms/virtualisation.html
For Hospitals
http://www.enersus.com.au/articles/enersus_news/mobileaccess_delivers_
unified_communications_in_hospital/
THREATS
• "Implementing UC creates new threats toward
enterprise voice systems, such as data loss
and fraud, as well as attacks against the
underlying data network resources. Until now,
network managers have primarily worried
about these latter threats, such as Denial of
Service (DoS) attacks that disrupt not only
voice, but other application services, as well,"
• http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/6
7878
RISK ANALYSIS
Security is a major concern for businesses in all areas of IT,
and unified communications is no exception.
Unified communications includes instant messaging (IM),
the telephone, VoIP, web and audio conferencing, desktop
video and other real time communications which can each
present a company with serious security risks if proper
security controls are not put in place.
Categories of Risk
Broadly put, IT managers identified and rated 3 categories of threat in
relation to unified communications:
Theft of Service
• This includes toll fraud, device theft and identity theft and implies the
unauthorised use of services, such as conference bridges, or the theft of
identity.
Denial of Service
• This includes denial of service (DoS) and disguised attacks. It implies a
deliberate or accidental attack against services and applications that
render them unusable for IT users.
Privacy and Compliance
• This focuses on interception of communications and impacts the
confidentiality and challenges associated with conforming to corporate
compliance policies and legislation.
• Apart from the constant battle against unsolicited email (spam), the two
biggest challenges identified by IT managers - to provide a reliable (not
exposed to DoS) and secure (no exposure to identity theft) service to IT
users. http://www.dimensiondata.com/Lists/Downloadable%20Content/SecureUC_129152174627818750.pdf
Strength
• Standards based solution.
• Strong commitment to Open
Standards
• Strong focus on partnerships with
leading collaboration vendors
• Strong collaboration/Web
conferencing product with Meeting
Exchange
• Reduces overall energy
consumption and ongoing costs
• Simple upgrade path
Weakness
• Requires new skill sets and training
• Hard to establish initially due need to
evaluate network support and
availability
• If not a new site lose on original
investment
• Interaction with other solutions proves
difficult to move away from provider
for application platform
• Sometimes hard to match needs with
available software and hardware
capability
• Difficult to integrate with third party
products (IM, Video Conferencing, etc)
• Scalable solution
• Easy growth path to new features
• Interfaces with POTS (Plain Old
Telephone Systems).
.
Opportunity
• Tremendous market interest in UC
• Easier integration with third party
vendors will assist with growth
(Development of integration
standard is currently in draft)
• Single Sign On capability will allow
for better management and asset
tracking
• Capability to integrate with other
companies will aid in business workflow
• Allows Security to be customised to
follow the user rather than working
in security zones
Threat
• Integrated solutions are partnership
based and inflexible.
• Lack of a standard is causing Industry
to provide isolated solutions
• IBM is working with multiple voice
communications partners.
• Google is launching SaaS UC
capabilities
(Gmail, Google Talk, etc.).
Clients’ perception that company is
focused only on voice (voicemail, voice
conferencing, and voice over IP) may
remove company from consideration in
some sales opportunities
Communications Convergence
Communications
Convergence
Occurs
Communication
Capabilities
Mobile Phones
E-mail
Voicemail
Fax
Integrated
Communication
Solutions
IM and
Presence
Web and Video
Conferencing
VoIP
PBX Integration
Integration with
Applications
IP Telephony
Mobile/Remote
Solutions
Horizontally
Integrated
Communications
Expanded VoIP
Scenarios
Common
Directory
Standards Based