The Coming Battle Over Unified Communications

摘要

Some dreams die hard. Here in Chicago, hopes are high that the White Sox will repeat as World Champions, that glory days will return for the Bulls and Bears, and that the Cubs will.....well, it's increasingly hard to find anyone who believes that the Cubs will ever do anything. So too, in the world of enterprise voice and converged networks. There's considerable optimism that IP Telephony and, in particular, Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), will change the landscape and allow any-to-any communications with a rich feature set. And that the silos of voice mail, email and fax, IM/presence, video and collaboration will be reconstructed into a unified communications package. Elements of this grand scheme have been kicking around for some time, sometimes labeled "unified messaging," but today's visions of unified communications go much further.