Saturday | 22 November, 2008
Still early in the game for unified communications
Protocol issues, set-up snafus stymie lab testing
David Newman (Network World) 24/04/2008 08:27:45
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Putting it all together

The InteropLabs team's work seeks to demonstrate anytime, anywhere communications with a series of demos that tie together disparate messaging platforms (see the figure). In all, the team identified eight demos to showcase unified communications:

  • Alice and Bob are communicating by instant messenger, but decide they need to speak on the phone instead. Bob is on the road, reachable only by cell phone, while Alice is in her office. The unified communications system automatically figures out locations and phone number and places calls to Bob and Alice. Neither party needs to know anything about phone numbers or locations.

  • Alice communicates with Bob, and a calendar automatically enters this event (a useful billing feature for lawyers, consultants, accountants and others who bill on a time and materials basis).

  • Because Alice already has a meeting in her calendar, her phone won't ring, but she will still be reachable through instant messaging.

  • Alice steps away from her desk, and thus should only accept voice mail but not instant messages or videoconferences.

  • Alice is in a meeting, and should be reached only by voice mail or e-mail (no voice or video).

  • It's after 5:30pm, so Bob should receive any communications intended for Alice.

  • Whenever Bob teaches a course at a central location, video links automatically get set up at remote locations.

  • When Alice dials 911 in an emergency, a company's or university's security team automatically gets notification both via instant message and e-mail.

    All the pieces needed to put together each of these demos exist today. But as the team learned, getting them to work across multiple platforms and protocols -- or in some cases, even within a single vendor's solution -- remains a pretty tall order.

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