Communications Convergence - etude de marche

SynopsisThese are challenging times, with organisations facing continuous change, including the shift to an agile e-business, increasingly mobile workers, and the unremitting demands to increase productivity and lower costs. The requirement for a multi-service IP network to support all an organisation's communication needs has never been more evident.

Forget the hapless attempts by the telecommunication industry to persuade you of the merits of technologies such as Voice Over IP (VOIP), or Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Convergence is not about the deployment of these or other technologies in isolation, but involves integrating communication services with existing applications to exploit both cost savings and, equally as important, enable new revenue generating opportunities.

Mobility of information is fundamental for the agile enterprise. The availability of real-time knowledge to the right person speedily at any location and using any device type is becoming a business imperative, especially if delegated decision-making is to prove effective. Convergence will facilitate this and the transformation of business processes, enabling for example improvements to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) workflows, which in turn will enhance customer satisfaction.

Another key benefit, which must not be overlooked, is how Convergence can be a catalyst for better collaboration, providing the tools and services to allow an organisation's stakeholders to interact easily and seamlessly. The result of which is a significant improvement in productivity and new flexible ways of working.

It is becoming increasingly important for IT management to begin to lay the foundations for making possible the availability of common communication services, either by infrastructure upgrades, or through Managed Services. Butler Group recommends that organisations look to put in place over the next 5 years plans to evolve to the use of a converged IP environment.

The Report Reveals:

Why organisations must start planning their Convergence strategy now.

The significance of the evolution to an all-encompassing IP-based environment

How Convergence can be used to radically improve collaboration and bring about workflow transformation.

Why the current fascination with technologies such as VOIP and WLAN by many vendors is missing the real opportunities.

A roadmap for the provision of communication services.

The differentiators between the leading vendors and their current convergent solutions.

What the future holds for the Convergence market.

The relevant technologies and protocols found in the convergent environment.

The vendors and products included in this Report are:

Alcatel � Alcatel OmniTouch Unified Communication

Avaya � Communications Manager 2.0

BT � BT Converged Voice and Data Solutions

Cisco Systems � Cisco Architecture for Voice, Video, and Integrated Data (AVVID)

Equant � Convergent Solutions

Interactive Intelligence � Interaction Center Platform

Mitel Networks � Mitel Networks Enterprise Applications

Nortel Networks � Nortel Succession 3.0

Siemens Information and Communication Networks � Siemens HiPath

TeleWare plc � Convergence Solutions

Key FindingsKey Findings

Organisations must start planning now for the transition to a common, IP-based infrastructure over the next five years.

Ignoring convergence in favour of deploying heavily discounted Private Branch eXchanges (PBXs) and taking advantage of call cost savings is a short-sighted strategy and a missed opportunity.

Vendors will never succeed with the current technology �push' approach. There must be a business imperative for organisations to invest in multi-channel communication services.

That necessity is not the deployment of IP telephony or WLAN technologies, as portrayed by many in the telecommunications industry, but the need to radically improve aspects of collaboration and flexibility.

The important goal is to be in a position to embark on business process transformation, enabled by seamless integration of communication services.

Convergence is a key enabler for better collaboration.

It is clear that industry standards will form the foundation of the next-generation networks.

Presence functionality will be an important characteristic of future communication solutions.

Managed services provision for communication requirements is an option worth considering for many organisations.

Management Summary

Introduction

These are challenging times, with organisations facing continuous change, including the shift to an agile e-business, increasingly mobile workers, and the unremitting demands to increase productivity and lower costs. The requirement for a multi-service IP network to support all an organisation's communication needs has never been more evident.

Forget the hapless attempts by the telecommunication industry to persuade you of the merits of technologies such as Voice over IP (VoIP) or Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). Convergence is not about the deployment of these or other technologies in isolation, but involves integrating communication services with existing applications to exploit both cost savings and, equally as important, enable new revenue-generating opportunities.

Mobility of information is fundamental for the agile enterprise. The availability of real-time knowledge to the right person speedily, at any location and using any device type, is becoming a business imperative, especially if delegated decision-making is to prove effective. Convergence will facilitate this and the transformation of business processes, enabling, for example, improvements to Customer Relationship Management (CRM) workflows, which in turn will enhance customer satisfaction. Another key benefit, which must not be overlooked, is how convergence can be a catalyst for better collaboration, providing the tools and services to allow an organisation's stakeholders to interact easily and seamlessly. The result of which is a significant improvement in productivity and new flexible ways of working.

It is becoming increasingly important for IT management to begin to lay the foundations for making possible the availability of common communication services, either by infrastructure upgrades or through Managed Services. Over the next five years, Butler Group recommends that organisations look to put in place plans to evolve to the use of a converged IP environment.

Business Issues

The 70s was the decade for hardware advances; the 80s saw great strides in software development; the 90s constituted the Internet boom and bust, while the current decade can be considered as one of consolidation, part of which will be the move to a convergent, IP-based infrastructure. The economic climate and the need to reduce infrastructure costs meant that IT management had to reappraise many tactical deployment strategies that gave rise to multiple disparate systems. The maturing IP technologies and standards also provide an opportunity for a single, adaptable infrastructure to be developed to support all the requirements of an agile organisation.

Businesses are beginning to expand outside the traditional boundaries found in the past. The extended enterprise now requires a common IP-based infrastructure to capitalise on information mobility and the need to be more flexible. There is a requirement for greater location independence, with remote working becoming more popular and many employees no longer remaining in one place for any great length of time. In order for this flexibility and changes in work practices to be catered for it is becoming apparent that the existing separate infrastructures are no longer the answer.

It is now a number of years after Year 2000 (Y2K) and a technology refresh is moving up many organisations' IT agenda. It is sometimes difficult to justify IP telephony on its own, or present a creditable Return On Investment (ROI) case when just replacing existing telephony functionality with no visible improvements in service. However, when looking at the wider picture the ability to combine voice, video, and data with other applications is a key enabler for new innovative services and future revenue generation, presenting a better rationale for starting investment in a next generation network.

Many advocate a �do nothing' approach, taking advantage of a competitive telecoms market to obtain call cost savings and continuing to deploy heavily discounted PBXs. Butler Group considers this a short-sighted strategy and a missed opportunity, as is contemplating a convergent network solution only when changing or upgrading existing legacy PBX or data networks. The requirements should be driven from the formulation of clear objectives on how to get the most from the integration of voice, data, and video.

While the benefits of convergence will undoubtedly vary from organisation to organisation, due to differing degrees of readiness of the underlying infrastructure, there is an overriding trend that enterprises ignore at their peril: the adoption of one consolidated network. It is imprudent to rush out and replace the entire infrastructure now, but it is important to start planning for the medium to long-term convergence of infrastructure in order to, among other things, improve customer satisfaction and enhance interaction with all stakeholders.

Technology Issues

The term �convergence' can be misleading. It is not a merger of voice and data networks, but the utilisation of the existing data, fixed and wireless infrastructure for the provision of all IP-based services, including voice, data, video, and storage. Within this all-encompassing environment one of the most important building blocks is the establishment of voice as an application. This fundamentally alters the communications paradigm, enabling the development and integration of many new innovative services.

Within this multi-modal environment various technologies co-exist that are capable of supporting multimedia requirements. It is most definitely not just about IP telephony, or the latest wireless technology. Unless an holistic, rather than a piecemeal approach is adopted to convergence, including taking cognisance of the organisation's infrastructure optimisation strategy and input from business objectives, then it will be impossible to maximise the undoubted benefits available.

The maintenance of separate networks for voice and data no longer makes the best of sense. Over the last few years many data networks have been upgraded to support a move towards e-business and are an integral part of day-to-day operations. The data network in many instances is now capable of being easily upgraded to support multimedia requirements and the various IP-based technologies and protocols. However, an often ignored prerequisite is the need for the network to be controlled by centralised, policy-based management, including the provision for Quality of Service (QoS), the same precondition as when adopting a server and storage consolidation strategy.

Other key considerations within a multi-service infrastructure include reliability and security. With the enterprise reliant on one network for all mission-critical services it is important that users are confident in its robustness. Provision needs to be made for redundancy and disaster recovery, along with 24-hour availability of all the main components found in the network.

Unlike voice networks, which have proven very secure, the IP environment has historically been poor at providing an acceptable level of resilience to the different types of malicious attack. There have been, and continue to be, both in the public and private sectors, many breaches in security. It is important that all necessary steps are taken to protect the infrastructure, and security measures such as user authentication, firewalls, intrusion detection, and Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) are put in place.

The need for new and enhanced service provision to support business requirements must drive infrastructure and technology deployment. A service-oriented approach is best suited to this environment to insulate developers and users from the complexity of the infrastructure, and to ease the integration of the different systems. There should be a move to provision of communication Web services, which are ideal for catering for a complex and distributed environment. Web services can also be utilised to mobilise information to all stakeholders. While Butler Group believes that there is no �killer application' as such, other than possibly voice, it is the combination of various technologies and applications that will enable innovative and compelling services that is valuable. However, presence functionality is seen as a key enabler, as is Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), which will have far-reaching implications for the structure of the telecommunications industry.

Market Issues

For a number of years now convergence has been declared as the hot topic. Unfortunately, each year it has not quite delivered on the potential. The reasons for this have been many fold, including immature standards, security concerns, and the cost of upgrading the data network. One by one these inhibitors have been eroded to such an extent that while 2004 or 2005 will probably not be �the year of convergence' there are now clear signs that convergence offers the makings of a viable strategy.

The wider implications of some aspects of convergence are now becoming apparent. Regulatory issues could yet put back the wider adoption of IP telephony, for example. Governments around the world reap significant revenues from taxes on phone calls, and the prospect of losing this important income is exercising various countries' administrators, as is the requirement to be able to monitor phone calls for security purposes.

Something which should not be dismissed lightly is the potential convergence has to cause massive disruption to other industry sectors. When fully deployed it will enable wide-ranging market transformation � bringing into sharp focus who will be the communication services providers of the future. Slowly but surely telephony is beginning to operate as an application across the Internet, while until recently the reverse was true with the Web running on top of the telephony system.

The outlook appears bleak for telecoms infrastructure vendors who continue to push technology and do not transform into software and services suppliers. Enterprise customers are more interested in vendors that can provide a complete end-to-end solution, either to be deployed using the existing data network, or with the provision of a Managed Service. Major players in the communication and network industry that offer the prospect of end-to-end converged solutions, seamlessly roaming from one transport technology to another, will be the most successful in the medium to long term. A Managed Services offering is now a workable alternative for an organisations' communication services.

The widespread availability of Third Generation (3G) cellular coverage will bring about true convergence of the mobile and IT worlds. This will not happen overnight, but be a gradual process over the next five years. While 3G is very much a technology looking for business justification at present, in the future it will enable a step change in the usefulness of mobile devices and applications.

Report Structure

Section Two � Introduction

Following the Management Summary, the Introduction sets the scene, giving an overview of the considerations, concepts, and business benefits of Convergence.

Section Three � Technology Features

This section describes the core services and technologies appropriate for a convergent solution.

Section Four � Architectures and Models

This part of the Report takes a closer look at the architecture of a next generation network, the adoption of a services approach within a convergence context, along with a deployment strategy and a roadmap for the evolution to a converge environment.

Section Five � Market Analysis

This section gives an overview of the market, providing an examination of the drivers, along with an investigation of the future direction. Including a review of the approach adopted by a selection of businesses that have deployed a convergent solution.

Section Six � Tables

This section first presents Butler Group's Features Matrix, which allows the selected vendors and products to be seen side-by-side in terms of features and capabilities. A number of supplementary tables are also included in this section.

Section Seven � Comparisons

This section includes comparisons of the vendors and services featured in this Report.

Section Eight � Technology Audits

This section contains in-depth Technology Audits for the vendors and solutions reviewed in this Report.

Section Nine � Vendor Profiles

This section contains brief profiles of a number of relevant vendors and technologies not covered by a Technology Audit.