CATALYST
With the deployment of integrated communication services there is an opportunity for organisations to significantly improve employee productivity, augment business processes, and foster innovation.
KEY POINTS
- A flexible service-centric approach to communications, to enable the exploitation of cloud computing and shared services, is becoming crucial.
- User choice should start to be factored into IT strategy.
- IT management needs to start taking account of the increasingly connected world.
- Wireless connectivity and mobility will have an increasing impact on the IT organisation.
- Unified communications underpins collaboration-intensive business processes.
- Security and end-to-end visibility remain key considerations within the communications environment.
- Managed services provision for communication requirements is an option worth considering for many organisations.
- Vendor partnering and alliances are a key aspect of the Enterprise Communications market.
Introduction
Many organisations are confronted by a number of issues such as continuous change, including the shift to an agile eBusiness, increasingly mobile workers, and the unremitting demands to increase productivity and to lower costs. The requirement for communications capability to support all of an organisation’s interaction needs has never been more evident. It is becoming increasingly important for IT management to lay the foundations for making possible integrated communication services.
Organisations are always on the lookout for ways to reduce costs to keep ahead of the competition. The new breed of networking and communication technologies presents an opportunity for enterprises to realise these objectives. Many organisations are moving from traditional hierarchies based on command and control, to looser structures utilising collaboration and team work. There is a fundamental shift from one-to-one to many-to-many communication. The integration with the Internet, the increasing mobility of employees, and the move towards virtual organisations, alongside the requirement to always improve profitability and customer service, mean that enterprises must embrace the adaptability that services-based communications can provide.
Business Issues
A growing challenge is to enable the interaction of disparate employees and organisations in order to drive innovation. However, this inter- and intra-company interaction brought about through collaboration is not without its risks – loss of corporate intellectual property and commercially sensitive information, for example. But generally speaking, fostering innovation and a product formed through the collaborative efforts of several minds is likely to be inherently more valuable than the thoughts of a lone individual. Like cogs in a machine, bringing together the right people, at the right time, in the right way is what good management is all about, and in the current working environment this is difficult to achieve without collaborative-working tools, such as video conferencing, and Web-based meetings.
What all of the business drivers point to is a transition to an organisation that is inclusive of all stakeholders, and is no longer constrained by distance, time, unnecessary costs, or other inefficiencies. The extended enterprise now requires IT services to capitalise on information mobility and the need to be more flexible. There is a requirement for greater location independence, with remote working becoming more popular and many employees no longer remaining in one place for any great length of time. In order for this flexibility and changes in work practices to be catered for it is becoming apparent that the existing separate siloed infrastructures are no longer the answer and a services-centric approach should be investigated.
Users want IT services and devices that meet their individual needs and help them to become more productive, and consumer technology appeals because of its low cost, usability, and flexibility. Resisting user choice is futile and will result in IT departments wasting time on policing that could better be spent on improving services. Enterprises want IT services to be reliable, secure, scalable, and supportive of compliance regulations, which means the prioritisation of manageability over user experience. For IT management, the challenge is to embrace social computing and consumer technologies, developing a strategy that maintains a balance between user preference and productivity, and corporate security and compliance.
The reach and range of business processes continues to increase as organisations extend and expand their interactions with partners, suppliers, and customers; and so the need to integrate geographically dispersed teams into complex business processes presents something of a challenge for the IT manager. Unfortunately, many business processes are still hampered by ineffective use of communication technologies. Organisations must therefore re-examine their corporate communication strategy in order to better support business activities and objectives.
Technology Issues
Whereas communication technologies have tended to be used in isolation, the growing trend is for end-to-end solutions using multiple technologies. Instrumentation, metering, and wireless technologies all have a significant role to play in automating business processes and improving productivity. It is also important that the impact that this increased connectivity on the IT environment, as well as the implication for back-end systems, is fully understood. IT management needs to consider the increasing connectivity of equipment and devices when planning improvements to the IT services and data management capabilities, and get involved in the procurement of the solutions dependent on them.
There are a number of security concerns in the extended environment which include the difficulties associated with an enterprise’s IT security policy embracing remote and mobile workers, as well as specific security concerns such as data leakage, data integrity/confidentiality, identity theft, and theft/loss of the mobile device. Today, IT departments employ a variety of point solutions and technologies to accommodate flexible working practices. With the trend for mobility showing no sign of abating, now is the time for IT departments to adopt a holistic approach to application delivery and IT infrastructure access.
Several factors are combining to drive the need for a consolidated approach to communications provision. Technology such as thin-client computing, mobile and wireless infrastructure, VPNs, and WAN optimisation have been treated as distinct parts of the communications picture, but this leads towards duplication of effort, increased costs, and poor manageability. Organisations should take advantage of these trends and design a communications architecture that supports flexible, secure access to information and applications, irrespective of the context of the user.
Mobile devices are becoming essential business tools, providing greater freedom and flexibility. Organisations quite rightly continue to highlight security concerns as one of the top inhibitors of remote application delivery. The range of users that demand access to today’s business systems and their various connection requirements covers the whole connectivity spectrum. However, one downside is the lack of effective authentication. Most mobile security solutions still rely mainly on user names and passwords to prevent unauthorised network access, an approach that has the potential to be compromised in the real world. Another challenge is that of protecting data once it resides on a laptop or mobile device.
The lack of monitoring and management capability of the extended environment needs to be addressed, which requires IT management to have in place the systems to identify if employees are working effectively. There have been cases where pilots have stalled, often due to the realisation that the management challenges are very problematic. A management and monitoring capability is an important aspect in the mobile environment. Administration issues have proved a serious inhibitor during the last two years. A big challenge for IT management is to convert pilot projects into full-blown implementations.
The rapid expansion in the number of remote workers leaves the IT manager with a major headache over how to gain expertise in this area. Using a service provider model and the Internet to deliver remote solution understanding and operational support, especially after the implementation of a mobility project, is one alternative to consider. The markets for managed mobile services are developing in strength and seeing considerable growth. Organisations should consider the benefits of using such services. Ad hoc, manual methods based on spreadsheets are no longer an acceptable or practicable solution, especially as data quality for accurate and comprehensive reporting is now crucial. In order to reach the required level of intelligence, the deployment of an integrated monitoring solution must be an area of focus, as must the setting up of feedback loops and dashboards integrated with existing systems and solutions.
Market Issues
Undoubtedly, 2009 was a tumultuous year for the communications market place. There have been significant changes both to the competitive landscape, and to the products and services offered by vendors. It is expected that 2010 will continue to see significant evolution in the market, particularly in regard to the positioning of vendors and their products.
In the Unified Communications market, Ovum believes that Avaya and Cisco are the vendors to shortlist, with SEN Group and Alcatel-Lucent strong alternatives. In the wider context of the market there are a number of other contenders, including ShoreTel, NEC, and Mitel, with solid technology portfolios and a reasonable market share. There are also specialist vendors in the mature contact centre and IP telephony market, such as Interactive Intelligence, and TeleWare. These vendors will continue to compete in their areas of expertise.
From the collaboration solution perspective, IBM and Microsoft are engaged in fierce competition to become the enterprise vendor of choice for collaboration and communications. It is hard to predict which of the two will emerge as the market leader. Ovum believes that they will both retain significant market share and that partnership with these vendors will be crucial for all of the participants in the communications market.
The adoption of enterprise mobility technology has been growing steadily among organisations over the last decade, with most vendors having come to the mobile enterprise market from different perspectives including mobile device endpoints, mobile management, mobile applications, or mobile middleware, and as such each mobility solution has different strengths. Depending on the complexity and the requirements of the mobility deployment, different vendor solutions will be applicable. There are numerous solution providers in the market; however, RIM and Sybase have emerged as the vendors which enterprises should shortlist when looking to invest in an enterprise mobility solution.
IT management, especially those working for smaller organisations, should consider whether the approach of deploying sophisticated mobile middleware is really what is required for improving communications and mobility. Perhaps they should take a look at alternative innovative approaches such as exploiting existing Microsoft or IBM software infrastructure, employing mobile capability found in the communications solution, or utilising managed services. The time is fast approaching where mobility should be seen as a component of enterprise communications rather than a specialist area requiring a separate solution.
Due to the maturity of the enterprise mobility market, a diverse range of solution providers have entered the market. Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are now offering a range of hosted enterprise mobility solutions. In particular, they have focused on providing remote access, mobile device management, and mobile e-mail. Ovum expects MNOs to play an important role in the enterprise mobility market as they are uniquely positioned to provide an end-to-end service offering, from the device and mobile applications to the network plan. Although, MNOs usually partner with technology vendors on a white-label basis and are focusing on providing hosted solutions.
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