UC deployments require 'thorough' planning

Businesses who aim to deploy a unified communications (UC) solution must make sure it has had "thorough planning", according to an industry commentator.

Anshu Shrivastava, of TMCnet, believes that UC provides many benefits for businesses, but warns that the deployment of a solution is less simple than running it.

She believes that coordination is needed between the different IT teams involved and an experienced person should be in charge of the project.

"Since UC technologies involve many areas of IT such as network, directory services, core messaging infrastructure, and desktops and mobile devices, the implementations of UC are considered to be a highly complicated process," she said.

"Also, UC has implications for applications and their development teams as the project develops.

"The project leader with the right acumen to bring all the different teams of IT together and make them cooperate without creating a fuss will come in handy."

A recent study by In-Stat found that it could take a whole generation before UC makes real changes to the way people work.

However, the research did show that smaller changes may take place sooner, with habits like text messaging being adopted in the workplace.