These changes will help address UC at its most basic level—convergence of voice and data platforms—but what about the future? UC buzz, which has become confusing and not much more than a marketing doorstop, portends a whole new world of integrated business processes that take advantage of instant messaging, e-mail, video and voice. There is a lot of research on it—a nice mix of the next stage of VoIP and "presence-based" applications with spices of IM and videoconferencing. Microsoft and Cisco use the buzzword a lot to push their products, mostly to replace an older PBX with something sexy. Call centers and work-at-home seem fertile ground for UC, whatever UC is.

Managing UC

UC is still a vision and long-term strategy—really the recognition of an overall trend with communications. UC needs to be treated as a program managed over the long term.

However, vendors take the UC moniker and run with it (any surprises there?) to sell products that may or may not be ready for prime time. The reality is that unified communications will only be real when applications are developed based on the underlying technologies—and so far there has been no "killer app."

Business groups and end users don't really care about UC—they care about the productivity value from the tools and applications that they interact with every day to get the work done. ROI comes at the project level as different components of the UC framework are implemented, such as VoIP, corporate IM or desktop videoconferencing.

UC and the CIO

So if it's a long-term vision and strategy, should a CIO care? Sure, with IP-based telephony, traditional enterprise telephony is under attack; software plays a significant role in delivering voice, and new "UC" products such as those from Microsoft (Office Communications Server) will influence the market. UC application components will be delivered piecemeal and should be part of a long-term understanding of the trends and convergence.

Point decisions made at a project level, such as a PBX upgrade decision, will be viewed as evolutionary, functional replacements of current technology with the latest and greatest solutions. Other leading-edge projects might see the fundamental workflow and integration that UC class technologies bring to the table and make the case—ROI and otherwise—for significant change, but with sound business drivers and sponsorship.

CIO awareness of UC is important, but what is more important is the skepticism that a CIO needs to have when approached by vendors that have the ultimate unified communications product. UC is not a product, but an approach to implementing technology platforms that recognize the inherent integration of different ways of communicating.

Jack Santos is an executive strategist at the Burton Group and has more than 28 years of IT executive leadership specializing in bridging the gap between business needs and technological opportunity.