These resources include access to affordable capital, human resources and well known brand identities that assist in the development of markets for their products and services. 1Ģ The Benefit of Unified Communications to SMEs SMEs often lack the resources enjoyed by their larger counterparts. The integration however of communications with business processes and applications (UCB) in order to reduce human latency and improve those processes provides customers with substantially larger returns on investment than those obtainable from UCU. The productivity benefits of UC at the user level (also known as UCU) as described above provide compelling arguments to converge communications in all types of organisations. Furthermore, the storage of, faxes and voice mail in one inbox (Unified Messaging) facilitates easy access to these messages from multiple locations and devices. The ability to see a contact s presence status, manage one s preferred method of receiving communications and contact colleagues, clients and suppliers directly from one s address book via click to call enables considerable time savings. UC removes these silos by combining these multiple communication and collaboration technologies into one application with presence at the core, thus enabling one to be contacted via the most appropriate of multiple methods using the same address, device and interface. These technologies currently operate in silos with separate addresses across multiple devices. Examples of communication and collaboration technologies include voice (VoIP) and video calling, audio or video conferencing, web conferencing, instant messaging (IM), presence, and scheduling. The paper concludes with a look at the benefits of CommuniGate Systems CommuniGate Pro UC Suite for SME s and their service providers What is Unified Communications? UC is the integration of communication and collaboration technologies with business applications and processes. A roadmap for SMEs and service providers to migrate SMEs current legacy PBX environments and (separate) data networks to converged communications architectures with SaaS UC is then provided. It then explores the benefits of UC in general to the SME market and the benefits to such enterprises and service providers of SaaS UC offerings in particular. This white paper provides a brief introduction to UC and SaaS.
There is thus a growing interest in the offering of Unified Communications (UC) services as Software as a Service (SaaS) given the benefits to customers and service providers alike of a UC service offering delivered via a Cloud Computing model from service providers data centers. At the same time and against a backdrop of decreasing ARPU (average revenues per user), Internet and Telecoms service providers are seeking ways to improve the billable value of the services they offer their clients. One way of achieving the above outcomes is for SMEs to improve their communication and collaboration capabilities and integrate these technologies with their business processes.
1 S O L U T I O N S P R O V I D E R W H I T E P A P E R Unified Communications as Software as a Service Benefits for Small & Medium Enterprises by Nigel Sinclair Thomson Introduction Small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are seeking ways to improve their margins by providing better service to their clients, improving their productivity and reducing their costs.