Unified Communications for Municipals and Rural Electrics – Intro
Introduction
In these series of posts, I plan on going through the background of Unified Communications, where it came from and how the industry and technology developed into what it is today. I’ll be doing this by breaking things down into key areas that I feel were definitive in nature and process. The intent is to keep things on a high level and business focused; this is not intended to be a deep dive, but rather a paper from an independent source on why this important to you as a City Manager, member of a County Board of Supervisors or Rural Electric Executive.
The structure I’m planning is as follows:
- History – You can’t know where things are going if you don’t know where some of the technology and business drivers came from.
- The light turns on – When manufacturers came to realize where the real work and value was in the product(s) and where the values to their customers are.
- Standards – Standards are a integral part of technology, but standards are open to interpretation and can effect decisions long after a choice has been made.
- The Meat of the matter – How and what they’ve really unified, and how the applications play into a homogenous communications system.
- The last posts will be about applications specific that I see where Municipal Governments and Rural Cooperatives could see lower costs, increased productivity and better customer service metrics.
- Finally, a summary of the key points over what I’ve talked about.
I’m not intending to make you an expert. I just want you to feel comfortable when you have to sit in a meeting with a vendor and listen to some of the buzz words and techie talk. Of course, you could always hire a consultant.
The grand plan is to publish the final version as a white paper and make it available as a download.
This is a blog environment. I encourage comments and suggestions on these topics.
