By Computerworld Philippines Staff
September 1, 2008

Unified communication (UC) has been a buzzword for quite some time now, but many local companies are still wondering what it really is and what it can actually do for them. To find out exactly how local companies perceive UC and, more importantly, how they intend to leverage this technology in their business operations, Computerworld Philippines invited six CIOs and IT executives from various industries to its seventh CIO Roundtable of the year.

Sponsored by Nortel Philippines, the roundtable discussion held at Dusit Hotel in Makati City turned out to be a lively exchange of ideas among the participants. Although none of them have fully implemented unified communication in their respective companies, most of the participants had significant awareness about UC and its benefits.

“We do know the value of unified communication and we have already been planning for this, but we have to evaluate the business requirements and consider the current infrastructure that we have,” said Joyce Gabriel, information and communication systems manager of TNT Express Worldwide (Phils) Inc.

Dusit Thani Hotel’s OIC IT officer, Jojo Baniqued, pointed out that most companies in the hospitality industry are already looking into implementing unified communication systems. For his part, Asian Terminals IT manager, Randy Sac, said he has always been an advocate of unified communication because he believes it could help save costs and improve efficiency in their operations. “Whenever we evaluate new infrastructure projects, UC serves as our guideline; everything should be aligned with the UC direction,” he explained.

One challenge that was raised, however, is the need to justify investing on a UC infrastructure and getting management to realize the benefits that it could bring. “Sometimes the justification that it will improve employee productivity does not fly because management always asks how that could be measured and how it translates to the bottom line; do we get savings for instance,” noted Roland Oscuro, senior vice president for the network management group of Philippine National Bank.

Richard Bragado, senior manager for technology at Southeast Asian Airline’s (SEAIR) business process outsourcing arm, Helicon Technology, identified another issue that has to be considered before implementing a UC system, “What may be vital is to implement a security system; this is a major concern but it can be managed and controlled,” he said. “As long as business policies are in place and the appropriate technologies are implemented and supported, productivity can still be achieved without compromising security.”

Nortel Philippines’ enterprise leader, Armando Pascual, was also present to give his professional and personal views on unified communication. Agreeing that the issue of security that Bragado raised is a key concern, Pascual said: “That’s actually a reality in unified communication. The irony there is you want to expand the access of your network for productivity purposes, but when you do expand access, here comes the problem of security – people hacking into your system, users using it for personal use, etc. This is why when we deploy solutions like this we always talk about security measured that should be inherent in the solution.”

Excerpts of the discussion follow:

CWP: Before we begin this discussion, let’s agree on a common definition for unified communication first.

Pascual: Unified communication may indeed mean different things to different people; IT people in the Philippines and the market in general may have different ideas or concepts of unified communication. Some people think it’s just convergence or some say it’s an off shoot of what we used to call convergence but, for us, unified communication is more than just IT telephony or a convergence of data and voice. For us, the bottom line is, it helps companies by increasing productivity and lowering cost in infrastructure. Now unified communication, as the term itself implies, combines voice, data, and all other means of communicating, like instant messaging, which is very popular now, task messaging, voice mail, e-mail, Web chat, etc. It is an all-in-one, unified means of accessing and communicating.

The good thing about it is it can reach anyone, although, of course, there are some downsides to this, especially if you don’t want to be reached. But, say you are like Roland (Oscuro) or Jojo (Baniqued) who are always on call, the company will benefit a lot from UC because you can be reached whether you are away carrying just your mobile phone, if you are in your office with a desk phone, or at home with a laptop computer. If somebody wants to call you, they could just click a button and UC will take care of reaching you wherever you may be or whichever communication line is currently available.

CWP: What is your company’s perception of unified communication and, in your opinion, how much of a challenge is it to achieve?

Gabriel: I believe unified communication is really a breakthrough; communication is very essential for us since we work 24/7 so it is highly vital that we communicate with everyone. With unified communication, you can talk and discuss anytime, anywhere, even if the person is not available in his phone, there is always a way to reach him. However, there is no final plan yet on whether we will implement UC or not for the company but there have already been some proposals submitted to us.

CWP: So you’re really looking into implementing UC?

Gabriel: Yes, because it improves productivity and communication is really very vital to us.

CWP: What’s holding you back?

Gabriel: We have to carefully plan everything because we need to consider the current infrastructure that we have in place as well as the people: how prepared the users are for this, etc.

Oscuro: For us, there is no conscious direction to go to unified communication but we seem to be unconsciously heading there, as driven by business needs. We have received inquiries, for example, on whether we can implement instant messaging to improve communication between branches since we have island branches and we cannot expect people to read e-mail everyday. We also have inquiries on video conferencing for our management to do budgeting with our offices in other countries. Instead of them going to London, why not just have a Web or a video conference and collaborate online. We are also looking into putting up a single point of contact for our clients to inquire from and transact with the bank. So, there actually is no conscious direction to implement unified communication but, because of business needs and requests from users, we are most likely going that way. Who knows, we may wake up one day and find that we have incrementally implemented eight out of the 10 UC components, so why not go the full distance, implement the other two and put up a system.

Bragado: Similar to the case of Roland (Oscuro) here, our company has a great need for unified communication, both real time and online. Unified communication is a critical part of SEAIR’s operations as it permits real-time collaboration at every stage of bringing passengers to their destination. Employees can interact and transact among themselves and among business partners effectively. As I see it, unified communication should be able to, one, locate a person you want to reach; two, enable you to communicate with that person; and three, allow you to collaborate with the person using technology at the least cost.

In fact, these three aspects of unified communication have already been implemented in our company but, to achieve efficiency, UC requires certain technologies and infrastructure to be put in place. What we want to have really is a technology that will allow us to locate any user, be it a colleague or a business partner, and collaborate from anywhere, anytime using Internet connection or VoIP. The challenge is that there are some instances where the place of business does not have connectivity. There are destinations that we fly to where unified communication cannot be fully implemented because of the lack of infrastructure. Sulu, for example, lacks the required Internet connection to allow VoIP and data transmission.

CWP: How often do you go to these places?

Bragado: We are in Sulu several times a week. Another destination is Busuanga (where we fly to, at least, four times a week) and El Nido, Palawan. It was only recently when Internet connection was set up in these places, so it was not until recently that we were able to transfer data to and e-mail our partners there. There are still technological limitations in many areas that we fly to but, fortunately, the infrastructure is getting to these areas enabling us to circumvent these limitations. We are actually getting there.

Sac: For me, UC is always a first option in setting up the network infrastructure. I’m one of those guys who advocate and support unified communication, which is a challenge because I’m new in the organization and I have to reconfigure the infrastructure to converge different applications. It is really a challenge to prove to management that using the unified communication infrastructure will decrease the cost of operations significantly.

Baniqued: The concept of unified communication is so broad. It is the integration of e-mail, telephony, fax, mobile communications, collaboration tools, audio and video conferencing and Web conferencing into a coordinated and centrally managed communications system. We’re still in the stage of planning, which involves a series of technology decisions. There are many issues to consider like how much we will invest on the systems. We were planning to upgrade our PABX but, unfortunately, we had to put it on hold to prioritize other projects.

CWP: A recent Fairfax Business Media survey showed that more than 45% of respondents plan to increase spending on UC in 2008, particularly to integrate e-mail with other business applications. From what you’re seeing and hearing in the local ICT community, do you think the interest in UC is as strong domestically? How big does unified communication loom on your budget radar and why?

Oscuro: I guess the challenge there is whether the users are ready. Coming from a very traditional institution, we feel that there’s still a lot of education that needs to be done as far as the users are concerned. But we are getting there. I guess for the local scenario, the interest in UC is being driven by the need to improve, the need to compete better with whoever is your competitor in your respective industry. Although I haven’t heard of a company that has gone full blown with unified communication, there are a lot implementing certain features of unified communication, say extending e-mails by adding collaboration in the e-mail, implementing instant messaging. Most of them already this so why not make it a productivity tool for the business.

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