Digital Common Sense

10/7/2008

Unified Communications and Social Media - The Convergence Zone

I’d said I wouldn’t be posting here any more, but given the active readership here, Sheryl and I have decided to continue cross posting some of our work here for a time. Our core work is at Stardust Global Ventures.

Ken has been writing about unified communications for quite some time on the Realtime Unified Communications Community. The work there began as a VoIP-focused community, but within months it became clear that VoIP was moving quickly through any disruption into becoming a mainstay of the telecommunications networking infrastructure.

For many, with consumer VoIP services, commercial VoIP solutions (from leaders like Cisco, Avaya and Nortel), Asterisk and other departmental or SMB-oriented solutions (like Jazinga most recently), to mobility and wireless solutions have all come together to encompass the broader field of unified communications.

Today we hear news and talk about Communications Enhanced/Enabled Business Processes (CEPB) as the next point of convergence. The truth is that there are multiple convergence paths in progress simultaneously. Yes, absolutely the integration of network service (data, voice and video) with enterprise business applications (think CRM, ERP, SFA and the like) is clearly underway. While much of the talk is relatively recent, the effort to unify services and applications has been in progress for many years. Today we have the networking technology tools to make it a productive and cost-effective reality.

Mobility solutions are converging as well. Integration of Blackberries, iPhones and other handheld devices into the business network (whether large enterprise or small business) is moving rapidly. We’re seeing more and more integration of the handheld into daily business workflows and processes. This isn’t just users cobbling together things they want to do their job. Today we’re seeing real integration and adoption of corporation-wide solutions that bring the power of both handheld devices and wireless services into the hands of business workers everywhere.

There’s another convergence zone that isn’t as widely recognized, but we see it as still being a part of unified communications - that’s the widening impact of what we call social media tools. These tools range from presence and status sharing (Twitter, Jaiku, Brightkite, etc.), to real networking managment sites (Facebook and LinkedIn), to the array of related and supporting services that add value to our daily routines (Jott, Phweet, Twitterfone, SpinVox) all come together under the umbrella of unified communcations as well.

We wrote about this in Is Unified Communications an Industry or just Buzz Words?. We broadcast an Internet Radio call-in in show talking about the subject a few days later via our Talkshoe, but for mysterious reason known only to the net gremlins, the recorded podcast of that show vanished into the bit bucket.

We both take the position that today social media tools are an extended aspect of unified communications. That means in the weeks and months ahead, we’ll be working in some new ways. As authors for Realtimepublishers involved directly in the Realtime Unified Communications Community, and as part of our growing success here at Stardust, we’ll be working jointly with a wide variety of both small and large companies. We’ll be working on sponsorships and partnerships. We’ll be writing papers and some ebooks (some are already underway). We’ll be doing some interesting new podcasts. And we’ll be exploring opportunities with many organizations across the industry to help them better integrate their technologies with social media tools.

Social media is a fundamental part of the unified communications sector. It’s tied to how companies communicate with customers and partners. It’s quickly overrunning the old media style public relations and advertising models. Old media, old PR, and the failure to adapt and embrace these tools are becoming fatal hurdles for many companies.

As the First Couple in Technology, we are deeply entrenched at the nexus of all this activity. We’re actively engaging companies of all sizes around the world to help you better spread the word about your good work. If you need help wading through the quagmire of unified communications and social media convergence, drop us a line or give us a call. We can help.

Sheryl - 360-918-2244 sheryl@stardustglobalventures.com
Ken - 360-464-7713 ken@stardustglobalventures.com

Technorati Tags: Sheryl Breuker, Ken Camp, Stardust Global Ventures, Realtimepublishers, unified communications, social media, consulting services