The Power of Unified

Since the announcement at the end of June,  a lot of people has asked me what exactly is Unified Communications and more importantly,  where can I find more.

For most people,  I have sat them down and explained the idea to them including taking about the current silos of communication we have today e.g. voicemail, email, fax, telephony, voip and how these silos cause you to have multiple identities e.g. phone number,  email,  fax address, skype ID etc.  Finally I explain how the next wave of Unified Communications will bring all those silos into one place.  using one tool to access all these communication method and allow users to jump easily from one modality to another.

Well,  it appears that the 'powers that be' have put together a neat site that I can also point people in the direction of.  Unlike the current suite of websites,  this on is not prouct based like www.microsoft.com/livcomm or www.microsoft.com/exchange but is instead based around the solution i.e. Unified Communications.  The site includes videos from the annoucement as well as information on what products are included in the suite, press releases, a Unified Communications demo as well as a number of links (which go off to current product sites in some cases :-S).

Its still well worth a look and might help to clarify what Unified Communications is.  Pop along to www.micosoft.com/uc when you get a chance :-)