INDIA: Unified communications (UC) offers new ways to stay close to employees, business partners, and clients at lesser cost. Powerful new applications like unified messaging allow organizations to harness the power of converged communication for complete collaboration and mobility, creating a virtual organization offering optimal opportunities for connection.

Evidently, unified communication fits the BPO industry with much ease. And as in the current market scenario, the concept of home agents is growing since companies want to cut down on travel costs and attrition. Says Safir Adani, CEO and MD of Sitel India, "The UC concept holds a lot of promise for the BPO sector in terms of flexibility and speed of the market."

In the same vein, Vivek J Porwal, head, business unit, unified communications, Avaya GlobalConnect says, "The BPOs gain primarily in terms of improvement in productivity, improved mobility, presence, multi-tasking, reduction of travel costs, and related stresses. It also makes possible working from home."

The presence of a UC environment in an organization, and the use of IM with other collaborative technologies of UC help in increasing as much as twenty minutes of productivity per day per employee. Apart from that, UC also promotes green advantages by reducing travel and thereby reducing carbon footprints.

Commenting on the relevance of UC, Steve Tan, director, marketing, at Aspect Software, says, "The power of UC has already been experienced by BPOs and large enterprises, and now it is the turn of small and medium businesses (SMBs) to feel the difference that would essentially reduce the total cost of ownership. Ultimately it is not about mobility, it is cost effectiveness that will be the driving force for SMBs."

Unifying BPOs
Today, BPOs are actively using UC by deploying IP networks as the foundation technology and then deploying UC applications to provide a multimedia collaboration experience. Although, it is worth mentioning that till now only pilots of the technology are being incorporated.

Says Vikas Gupta, director, Technical Infrastructure Management, Tech Mahindra, "UC helps collapse multiple communication channels into one integrated interface to allow highly optimized communication, as well as simple user experience."

HTMT has been using UC for more than a year now. UC helps in the sense that the agents can multi-task. And, up till now we have not faced any major issues, says Subramanya C, global chief technology officer, HTMT Global Solutions.

Even provider vendors like Datacraft, Cisco, and Avaya are targeting complete contact spheres including captive BPOs, third party BPOs, and largely known domestic BPOs. Ideally suited for the BPO outfit where customer bases are huge, UC comes as a boon to the industry.

Working Together
UC very much relies on VoIP and pulls together unified messaging, voice, and video conferencing, and the presence technology to create and secure communication anywhere, anytime, and anyway through the enterprises and beyond.

According to Sanjay Manchanda, director, Microsoft Business Division, "VoIP-based communication is fast gaining traction in the face of pressures to reduce costs and increase productivity. We also believe that unified communication can significantly reduce environmental impact brought by employee travel."

Apart from IM, PBX (private branch exchange), presence, and conferencing are the other parts of the UC technology. PBX is installed by a company that seeks to reduce the number of phone lines used in its premise.

Some people like Gurpreet Singh Kohli, GM, Network Practices, HCL Technologies think that presence is the backbone of UC, and that it would have been incomplete without this functionality. He says, "Traditionally, instant messaging platforms have maintained presence engines in a big way where status of every individual is available."

Although UC has created a vast impact on the way employees communicate, service breach is one of the issues that on a general note organizations would like to avert.

Technology Risks
Amongst all the risks that UC poses, IM perhaps comes with the maximum amount of risk. This could be attributed to the high level of public IM penetration into the corporate environment. Most IM users use services like the MSN and Yahoo Messenger which allow transmission of audio, video, and files, and since most of these services are free there is little threat regarding security. However, they are prone to identity theft and identity ambiguity. The safest way to ensure organizational control over identity and credentials is by implementing corporate IM systems like Microsoft Live Communication/Office Communications Server.

Though UC promises huge cost saving, the BPO industry faces some challenges in implementing it.

The current bearish environment is likely to fuel further interest in UC. Earlier, TRAI regulations were limiting the deployment of UC in BPO. But this is no longer the case. With the recent Trai announcement removing all curbs on Internet telephony, UC deployment is likely to experience an upsurge. In the coming two-to-three years, the technology will integrate business process software into communication tools and accelerate business across the industry segment.