I have been working on “Exchange chat” LCS and OCS since 2003 and on phone integration since 2005.
In all this time I have met a lot of different people with different backgrounds, IT and IPT managers and a lot of different users.
One thing I notes is that when you talk with them about Unified Communication and in my case OCS, you meet all kind of different opinions on the matter if the company’s users are ready to use Communicator as their primary phone.
First of all you meet “Company’s / people” that are ready and just want it, then it’s just go ahead.
But you also meet IT /IPT manager that has forced their users to use some kind of soft phone from any IPT vendor, that decision is not that popular, and I understand, why take a picture of a phone and copy-paste in to the PC as software, without or minimum integrations to other software on the PC.
They aren’t ready do the same mistake one more time by giving the users a new “soft phone”, they are “Action paralyzed” and cannot/ or is scarred to take a new decision.
IT / IPT manager are also saying that there users aren’t ready for unified communication, my question is when will they be ready, if they never get the opportunity to use it in their daily work.
The decision makers are looking for a solution for their advanced phone users that normally are in some kind of front desk, saying that OCS doesn’t meet those users needs, but why is 5-10% of very heavy/advanced phone users take precedence for the last 90-95% of users.
You can combined solutions that can take care of the 5-10% and the last 90-95%.I think that OCS R2 and Response group & Attendant console and delegation will convince some of them.
There are users that aren’t ready for Communicator as their primary phone, for those users there are solutions, as an example Nortel CS1000 with features like Dual-forking and Remote Call Control, or the new “Tanjay” feature in OCS R2 where you have “RRC like” function.
By giving users this choice on what is there preferred device, they will over time experience that OCS is the right way to communicate, because communications isn’t just voice in old legacy phone.
Finally there is the Mobile phone user, living on/in their mobile phone, by forwarding all call to the Mobile number, let’s hope that OCS R2 take care of that, with the mobility and single-number reach, and also show “in a call” when using the mobile phone, because the presence information is the most important feature in any Unified Communication solution and you must have presence on any device in the company.
This is not the truth but just my opinion :)
