In 2015, complexity was still holding many enterprises back from deploying unified communications (UC), even though juggling separate tools for voice, video and messaging was looking harder to defend. The pitch of the time was a converged, seamless experience in which collaboration no longer depended on a desk phone.
Harsh Upadhyay, ICT industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific, argued that UC would no longer mean an IP phone, a soft client or email with presence. He described a business communication suite combining convergence, interoperability, security and dependability with collaboration, judged by the business outcomes CxOs expected.
Why did multi-vendor interoperability matter?
ZK Research found that more than 90% of large enterprises used several UC vendors. Even a company standardising on one vendor had to talk to partners running another.
For IT heads moving from VoIP to UC, the main concerns were therefore interoperability and a single enterprise-wide dial plan across PBXs and UC systems. Maintaining dial plans by hand was labour-intensive and error-prone.
The answer put forward was a core communications controller. It would handle session management, border control, session recording, WebRTC support and routing between voice, video and other UC systems, removing incompatibilities at the session protocol layer.
What role did cloud and mobile play?
Frost & Sullivan noted that telecom providers including Telstra, British Telecom, Verizon and Orange already offered UC-as-a-Service, and that large systems integrators would follow. A growing mobile workforce pushed UC applications onto phones and tablets.
BT Global Services’ Andrew Small, vice president of Unified Communications and CRM, said in 2015 that more enterprises wanted to use next-generation networks to improve their UC and collaboration platforms.
What did workflow-centric collaboration and WebRTC add?
The feature predicted a shift from voice-centric to workflow-centric collaboration delivered from the cloud. WebRTC would allow browser-based audio and video calls, conferencing, screen sharing, and SIP or PSTN interoperability. Voice and video could then run on many kinds of endpoint without costly phone infrastructure.
Oracle promoted its Unified Communications and Collaboration Solution on this basis. It said the product kept context across web, mobile and desktop, supported multi-vendor interoperability and could embed communications in ERP, customer care and human capital management applications. In Indonesia, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia used Oracle’s service delivery platform to launch extensions to its IP-based services.
What became of the building blocks?
Oracle still lists WebRTC Session Controller and Enterprise Session Border Controller among its communications products. It describes the WebRTC product as connecting browser or mobile clients to telephone or VoIP networks. It says the enterprise controller interconnects SIP trunks, on-premises telephony, UCaaS and contact-centre services, and can be deployed in major public clouds.