Unified Comms; information overload or organised chaos?

Last week I went on a time management course; ignoring the irony that I had to cancel two appointments to make it and subsequently worked until 2am Friday morning to catch up, it was a worthwhile experience.

Amongst the many useful tips that Gary from http://www.thereadinesscompany.com/ portrayed to us was Collection Points.

A Collection Point to me is essentially all the information gateways that we utilise in our everyday lives, I.e. Email and Calendars. Now as we did last week; take a moment to establish how many collection points you have.  I did and the answer was 13.

13!? That is:

Azlan Email / Calendars

Gmail Email / Calendars

Hotmail Email / Calendars

Twitter Direct Messages

Facebook / Calendars

Google +

LinkedIN

Blogs

Kitchen Calendar

Now I have pretty much integrated the whole lot onto my iPad and iPhone so that whilst I might have information overload at the very least it’s organised chaos… Sort of… the overriding winner of schedule according to my wife is the Kitchen Calendar and it’s the one thing that I cannot synchronise with….

I will be attempting to streamline some of this now that I see just how much chaos I have to sort through before I can get myself organised sometimes.

A majority of the above tools are also perfectly capable of providing meeting facilities which then led me to wonder how many Collaboration Points I had, the answer for this was equally astonishing: 10

Mobile Phone

Desk phone

Audio Conference Bridge

Cisco WebEx

Cisco Movi

Microsoft OCS

GMail Talk

Microsoft MSN

Google + Hangouts

TeamViewer

This was really brought to light this morning as I was juggling numerous logins, passwords and invites across multiple timezones as well.

Now I realise that this is partially my own fault for jumping on more bandwagons than Clint Eastwood in a Sunday afternoon Western, but depending on which camp my friends and work colleagues are set up in I have been left with little choice in my career other than to be available across all major mediums.

This is where the great conundrum of Unified Communications and it’s apparent benefits are less clear; the commercial competition means that UC is currently anything but; so what is the answer?

Let’s face it the likelihood of Microsoft and Cisco presently agreeing to collaborate natively with their Enterprise desktop sharing platforms has less chance of occurring than me successfully pronouncing the name of that lovely Welsh village on the Island of Anglesey, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch….

There is however a but, as with Email and Calendars it will most likely result in Apps on your Android or iPhone that will aggregate these services through a single interface.  Much to the original annoyance of MS and Google we now see the availability of public Gateways that enable a Google user to engage a Microsoft user on Instant Messaging, ergo a service now available in the Enterprise Market so it’s clear that consumer influence is powerful indeed.

Yes you might argue there is some interoperability available between video platforms in the Enterprise Market but let’s face it, it’s not great and some of the fundamental brilliance of the UC concept is not successfully delivered either, Presence being the obvious candidate here.

So what is my prediction, well as with the IM integration I believe Desktop Sharing will be next.  It will be down to the Consumer Market who will ensure there will always be several camps of services available; split between those who demand it and those who didn’t realise they needed it.

By it’s very nature this also ensures healthy competition and development.  Yet equally it will be the consumer who will demand that these camps will be able to sit round a single fire, meaning it can only be so long before the Enterprise Market concedes.

Any thoughts? Please comment below or email me at:

Chris.Ovett@Azlan.com