What is unified communications, and why is it important in business?

UC is a conceptual framework for integrating various enterprise communication methods -- including telephony, video calling and conferencing, email, instant mess

aging and presence -- into a single platform, with the goal of streamlining and enhancing business communications, collaboration and productivity.

UC deployment is less about rolling out a single technology and more about developing a strategy for how myriad real-time communications -- synchronous or with negligible latency -- and asynchronous tools help users collaborate and communicate in a productive manner that enhances organizational workflow.

Most companies should be able to clearly and easily identify the business needs that UC meets. TechTarget contributor Jon Arnold listed the benefits of UC, including the following, that emphasize its importance and justify enterprise adoption

1. improve existing processes;

2. boost employee productivity;

3. increase team-based productivity;

4. enhance organizational agility;

5. streamline IT operations; and

6. reduce costs.

UC applications and platforms support the mobility critical to next-generation business plans, with some being developed as mobile-first apps. At the very least, UC tools enable users to experience team collaboration in a similar manner across desktop and mobile devices, on the network and remotely.

Looking ahead, UC presents opportunities -- such as cloud-based services overtaking on-premises products (unified communications as a service is taking off), team collaboration becoming a hub of work, AI being incorporated to speed access to relevant information and to enable better communication, and the emergence of greatly improved security, governance and compliance. Also expect business processes to get a boost from analytics and enhanced workflows.