Is Unified Communications a Ponzi Scheme?

Gartner VP Nick Jones says he is "an unashamed unified communications skeptic for a mixture of technological and business reasons." That might exaggerate the attitude most potential buyers might have, but there is little doubt the value proposition sometimes is a bit unclear.

"UC looks to me like an ill-assorted mix of technologies that vendors want to sell in a single bundle because it’s convenient for them, rather than because they’re what your employees actually need," says Jones. To be sure, the return on investment for full-blown UC solutions has often been difficult to illustrate.

In recent days some attention has shifted to video conferencing, audio conferencing and related solutions that essentially can be proven in by reduced spending on physical travel, coordinating remote work teams or enabling sales and marketing activities on a more affordable basis than has been possible in the past.

In fact, some might argue that one issue is the relative easier task of identifying point solutions that unify some business processes, without requiring a shift to a completely new architecture. Under those conditions, it is easier to point to incremental advantages from unifying some specific processes, but not all.

The other issue is the new complexity social media and social networking represent. It is not always immediately obvious how to integrate those tools with existing email, messaging, voice and mobility solutions in a specific enterprise context.

"UC is a dinosaur in a world of fast-moving little furry mammals; the leading edge of communication and collaboration is happening in the consumer space driven by companies like Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Fring, Nimbuzz and dozens more," he argues.

These are better, cheaper and more fashionable than UC and there is no way the so called “enterprise” vendors can keep up with their rate of evolution, Jones argues.

Mobility can be equally challenging, sometimes as mobility relates to enterprise integration, sometimes related to the more-dispersed nature of work, where integration "backwards" to the enterprise phone system might represent less value in a highly-distributed, mobile-reliant enterprise. In many cases, hosted services might be viewed as a more flexible, less costly and more effective alternative.

Also, UC is technically unachievable because many communications channels such as SMS and MMS aren’t accessible to enterprise servers, the only place where everything actually comes together is on your mobile handset, Jones argues.

In part, his observations intentionally are intended to provoke a sharper debate about unified communications, to present one side of a debate on UC merits. But lots of observers might agree the questions remain germane in many cases.

Is Unified Communications the biggest scam since Ponzi?