Creating a competitive advantage with converged communications.

The buzz about converged communications

The way the business world views and uses communication systems is undergoing radical change. That buzz you hear is about converged com-munications-the integration of voice, video and data onto a single Internet Protocol (IP) network. IT and business executives in organizations of all sizes are feeling pressure to adopt this technology. Many executives may even fear that they already lag behind.

Like you, IBM believes that when there's a buzz emerging in the marketplace, it's worth listening to. To find out what business and IT executives think about converged communications and gain an independent view of what's happen-ing in the marketplace, IBM sponsored anonymous research late in 2006. (Refer to Appendix A for information about how the research was conducted and who participated. This white paper contains quotations from some of the participants in this study.) When IBM reviewed the results of this research and compared them with a cross section of secondary resources, such as analyst reports on the subject, four important findings that affect customers emerged across industries:

1. Converged communications can increase business benefits and agility-or not.
2. Adoption of converged communications is typically viewed as a tactical IT issue, not a strategic business imperative.
3. Converged communications initiatives can often be perceived as risky.
4. Incumbent vendors are often seen as the logical first point of contact.

Our most important finding is that there's a lack of clarity in the marketplace about the true nature of how converged communications works and the real, strategic value it provides businesses. Converged communications can be a daunting engagement. This is due, in part, to the information overload that exists. But it's also because converged communications is only recently reach-ing technological maturity, which has created an environment ripe for the proliferation of business applications.