IT's Real Role In Enterprise Migration To UC

Structuring IT’s Role In UC Change Management                                                              

In my last article I introduced IT’s role in planning and implementing a business organization’s migration to UC, highlighting the need for IT to help involve both business management and individual end users in defining UC requirements. I mentioned that my Unified-View partner, David Zimmer, has started looking at the ITIL framework as a means of organizing the complexities of IT’s involvement with UC technologies.

David has now written the first of a series of articles that will cover the impact of UC on change management for business process operations and integration with all forms of end user communications. This is where ITIL procedures will be very important for IT management to ensure they can provide and support enterprise UC technology responsibilities through well defined and efficient “change management” procedures for the evolution of UC. The challenge of UC is that it is not simply a single communication application, a single network environment, or single endpoint device, so any changes will have to be carefully managed no matter how easily such changes can now be made.

David has also written a thoughtful commentary on Blair Pleasant’s recent view of the ”UC Definition” problem. It echoes many of the points that I have written about in my past columns. However, I would like to add another enlightening perspective to the impact of UC on IT responsibilities.

IT and UC Support – All End Users Are “Customers!”

With the advent of “presence” as a key UC element for business communications, the similarity to traditional call center technologies to route incoming customer calls to an available (logged-on, not busy) skills-based “agent” has been most noticeable. With IP, SIP and presence management, the availability for a real-time connection (IM, voice connection) for all end users can be more easily implemented. This, in turn, also means that IT must now take some responsibility for supporting connectivity access for all individual end users that communicate with the enterprise from any location, with both wired and wireless devices.

“End users” include:

• Internal users - (Intra-enterprise contacts)    
• External business partners -  (Extra-enterprise contacts)
• Customers -  (Consumer and business customers)

Such communication includes both “person-to-person” contacts as well as “person-to-process” contacts (online self-service applications via both visual or speech interfaces). Finally, initiating direct business notification contacts to any specific individual user is expanding to pro-active business process applications-to-person contacts. So, enterprise IT has to be involved in supporting UC flexibility for both “contact initiation” as well as “contact reception/responsiveness” that will improve business process performance for all types of end users.

Expanding IT’s responsibilities to support end users who are NOT within the enterprise organization will become a key challenge for ongoing UC  “change management.” This will apply to any business application that must interoperate with individual end users through a variety of communication services, whether premise or service based. Wireless mobility and the use of personalized ”smart phones”, which exploit UC flexibility more than the wired desktop, is therefore going to place new and heavy demands on IT support and management capabilities. 

What Do You Think?

You can contact me at: artr@ix.netcom.com or (310) 395-2360. You can reach David Zimmer at info@ameagle.com or (215) 491-2544.