Q. What’s the latest from Siemens Enterprise Communications? What areas are you working on?
A. Currently, our efforts are focused on areas like socially-aware unified communications (integration of enterprise unified communications with public social networks), unified communications in a box (an off-the-shelf offering for SMEs in the form of an appliance), offerings for hosted and cloud services, integration of communication solution and business processes, specialised vertical solutions for trading floors, dispatch centres and command and control centres, and energy-efficiency management of IT and telecom infrastructure.
Q. What were the top enterprise communications trends of 2010?
A. Customers started investing in communication solutions which improve employees’ productivity. Video adoption in enterprises increased substantially. Many customers migrated from simple voice mail to unified messaging solutions. Green-field customers started deploying full-IP telephony solutions. Audio-video integration in boardrooms took the centre stage. SMEs were faster to adopt technologies like unified communications. Wireless LAN in enterprises saw the biggest growth in year 2010.
Q. What do you expect in the coming years?
A. Coming years will see more rapid changes in communication technologies as well as business models. On the technology front, large-enterprise unified communications will be software-based, voice will be integrated into enterprise business processes and applications, social networks and related communications will become integral part of enterprise communication, and unified communications will move from ‘nice to have’ to ‘key’ competitive advantage. On the business front, single-vendor enterprise unified communications solutions are not realistic, multi-vendor services capabilities will be required, and communication will move from ‘infrastructure’ to ‘communications as a service’ model.
