Unified communications is transforming India Inc. in a big way. In an interaction with TelecomTiger, the CEO and Director of ABS India, a partner of Alcatel-Lucent talks about challenges, plans and the competition that the sector is going to witness in future. Excerpts:  

Q: How Unified Communications is transforming India Inc?

A: Unified communication solutions are definitely transforming India Inc. It’s all about enterprise business challenges. The acceptability of this collaborative work environment is on a high today and expected to be even higher considering the business dynamics for tomorrow.  When we talk about unified communications, its value proposition needs to be appreciated with respect to the communication requirements of the enterprises rather than looking at the cost of deployment alone. However one needs to look at the usage patterns which purely depend on the communication environments of any enterprise. Large & Medium enterprises, multi location enterprises are the one which can understand and comprehend the value addition.

Q:  Has Unified Communications succeeded in removing the complexity of the multiple modes of communication channels?

A:  Definitely. Unifying your communication by minimizing multiple modes of communication will add enormous value to entire chain of business practices. And that is the key feature of UC. Our internal research shows more and more enterprises are looking at UC as a major contributor for enhancing organizational efficiency, which is one simple solution. UC is most user friendly and is available in ala carte packages. UC enables enterprise resources to collaborate more effectively and keeps the users connected everywhere.

Q: Are there any regulatory concerns as far as the unified communication is concerned? If there are any, how they could be addressed?

A:  We have not come across any such regulatory issues.

Q:  How can adoption of unified Communications be beneficial in recessionary environment?

A:  The benefits will be enormous. Recession or not, it’s criminal to waste enterprise resources, time and money on multiple modes of communication. We offer a solution that is easy and safe and will enrich user experience in terms of cost and allows everyone in the entire chain to be part of the team irrespective of user groups. The biggest value addition will be presence thus ensuring time factor being addressed at all levels.

We have research reports mentioning that enterprises can save up to 75% of the cost on collaboration costs and travel costs and that is huge. Unified Communications for an enterprise will be of huge advantage who ever adopts the UC strategy. Early movers will benefit a lot in times to come. Another important contribution of UC will be its contribution to the productivity in an enterprise. From a business perspective enterprises needs to have this productivity high at all levels and UC enables the same.

Q: What are your plans to implement valuable and careful Unified Communications?

A:  We have a simple, next generation UC application package by Alcatel-Lucent, which offers ala carte solutions to be chosen. Solutions can be initiated on any enterprise platform without much hassle. With over a decade of experience as a system integrator we have a differentiation expertise to talk about as compared to most in the market. One has to understand UC before trying to sell it. There are a many in the market but the degree to which the same are applicable from a perspective of requirements is of essence to sell UC. We have invested in research to understand user requirements and in a real time set up to expose or give user experience to our prospects.

The results are encouraging. UC will be appreciated only when there is a real use, this concept cannot be pushed or you cannot create a need here. There is a real potential in the market – go to them. We at ABS India enable enterprises to do better with their enterprise communication challenges and allow enriched user experience. ABS India understands and appreciates the fact that enterprise needs to be “live at all the time”. We have solutions which will enable them to work from any location, any network and any device, easy to install and use – plug & play solutions and grows with the enterprise.

Q: With new players entering enterprise business in India, do you think the competition is getting stiffer?  

A:  We have a many claiming as UC leaders. This concept is relatively known to every one from single user to multiple users, from enterprises to home users. There are limitations from technology, user & solutions perspective, however this is a long term game as larger investments would mean securing all the above in first place. In times to come most of the players get recognized in various bands with respect to the capabilities they can offer to the user. However UC is here to stay. There will be a refitment of UC vendors when more and more enterprises start experiencing the same.

UC market has good number of competitors from local vendors to international players that offer simple to enriched solutions. However it all depends on understanding from user perspective, designing and deploying the custom made solutions. Yes there will be a stiffer competition in days to come but the vendors with competitive advantages will run longer in this game of UC.