What’s the Unified Communication?
Unified communications (UC) is the integration of real-time communication services such as instant messaging (chat), presence information, IP telephony, video conferencing, call control and speech recognition with non real-time communication services such as unified messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax).
UC allows an individual to send a message on one medium and receive on another. It should be possible to easily transfer any activity or message to another medium. For example, one can receive a voice mail message and choose to access it through email or a cell phone. If the sender is online according to the presence information and currently accepts calls, the response can be sent immediately through text chat or video call. Otherwise, it may be sent as a non real-time message that can be accessed through a variety of media.
Unified Communication Overview
Increase Operational Flexibility
- Improve operations with easy, modular, and centralized management tools. Provide professional-grade reliability, availability, and scalability. Provide larger mailboxes at lower cost by enabling organizations to choose their own storage method (for example, storage area networks [SANs], direct attached, or desktop quality discs that do not sacrifice system availability).
- Consolidate telephony, voicemail, and e-mail systems to dramatically lower maintenance and service costs, particularly for organizations with remote or branch offices.
- Using Software + Services, determine the best mix of on-premises and cloud-based communications solutions to meet the needs of your users and administrators.
Amplify protection and control
- Manage security, compliance, and archiving policies for messaging and telephony systems with common tools.
- Eliminate threats before they reach the corporate firewall with built-in security technologies, including real-time antivirus/antispam software and security services for e-mail and instant messaging.
- Protect critical information and help prevent costly exposure with built-in compliance and encryption.
- Provide IT control with failover, redundancy, and scalability across your organization.
Streamlined Communications
- Contact people based on their availability, and then click to communicate with them in the best way: by e-mail, Voice-over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging, or audio/video/Web conferencing. Access all communication with a single sign on and single inbox.
- Connect from within Microsoft Office Outlook, Microsoft Office, and other applications you use every day.
- Communicate securely while working away from your desk, on the road, or at home with a single, familiar client for the personal computer (PC), Web, and smart devices.
- Bring people together with audio, video, and Web conferencing to improve team collaboration and to reduce the monetary and environmental costs of travel.
Extensible Communications Platform
One advantage of a software-based communications infrastructure is that businesses can embed communications capabilities into existing line-of-business applications and use communications and workflow capabilities to automate business processes, which saves money, saves time, and improves customer service.Office Communications Server 2007 R2 delivers an extensible communications platform that works with an organization’s existing messaging and telephony infrastructure and can adapt to changing business needs.
Operational Flexibility and Control
IT departments are expected to manage cost control, security, integration with existing infrastructure, and compliance requirements.Office Communications Server 2007 R2 allows IT administrators to meet these challenges effectively by giving them the ability to provide flexible communications solutions to users and by delivering the tools they need to help manage secure, compliant communications.
