Split Personality
I love Unified Communications. I really do. This is seriously amongst the coolest technology I've encountered in a career of cool technologies. But it's not only the technology itself that I love, also what it does for me.
Do you feel like you simply have too many persona? I mean people know you at work, at home, socially, as someone's other half, parent. Then they contact you by work phone, home phone, personal email, work email, IM address, work IM address, Facebook account, yada, yada, yada. In turn that means you have multiple inboxes, answer machines, message histories, and voicemail accounts to check. If you weren't already insane, it's enough to drive you so.
Well UC (largely) does away with that. At least on the "multiple repositories" front. My IM conversations, voicemails, emails etc. are all stored in my one (Exchange) inbox. I now also forward my mobile to the work landline when I'm busy. That means I never have to "dial in" to collect my voice messages.
Of course with Windows Mobile (5 & 6) my inbox is synchronised with my mobile device. Which means that wherever I am, I get all of the communications sent to me, without having to check half-a-dozen places. You have no idea how enabling that is.
But wait there's more. Whenever my PC is attached to the Internet (without having to have a VPN) my communicator client is connected. That means I can be at my desk, working from home, or travelling to Melbourne, Seattle, or London, and people can call my local Sydney desk number and reach me. Yes I know you can do that on Skype too, but this is not an additional number I need to subscribe to, this is my std work desk number.
Once you start with the additional features, like just starting an IM, LiveMeeting, or Video Conference with any of the people in your team (including partners and customers) directly from a document or website. You start to understand just how limiting and intrusive the plain old telephone really is.
With UC, I become a person again. People contact Roger. They can see if I'm available (ping me on IM), away from my desk (try the mobile), in a meeting (send an SMS or email), or out of the office (send an email). I in turn can totally control how I want to be contacted, and whom I'll let intrude to what level. Already most of my team have webcams. Whether they're on client site, working from home, or in the office, we talk to each other face to face.
You may've seen BillG launch our UC technologies a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday we had the 1sr Australian UC Launch in Melbourne, and on Monday 19th we have the (oversubscribed) UC Launch in Sydney.
If you're suffering from Split Personality and have just too many inboxes in your life, look to UC.
Cheers
R42
