Since it is part concept and part technology, UC always has been difficult to define. Most broadly, it can be called a means of working within an application to identify a desired person, instantaneously determine if he or she is available and, if so, reach them on any communications platform supported by the organization.

It is possible to disagree on whether a particular application fits the bill. Increasingly, however, the most important parties, users and potential users, don't care. What matters to them is the value UC brings.

"What we are seeing now is more deployments," says Bern Elliot, Research VP and Distinguished Analyst for Gartner. "I would say that is the difference. There was a lot of interest in previous years. I think more and more the interest now has shifted into trials or phased-in deployments."

The technologies, such as IM, VoIP and conferencing, are widely deployed, but not necessarily as part of a UC platform. The UC glue can come later.

"A lot of the products that are being tied into UC already are in use and have been around for a while," says Nora Freedman, a senior research analyst with IDC's Enterprise Networking group. "The change is that the focus is on the end goal and how to leverage those solutions." So UC is here, it is real, and it still is hard to define.

E. Brent Kelly, a senior analyst and partner for Wainhouse Research, suggests that many of the common definitions of UC are too broad. "Some people define it as communications embedded in business processes or communications designed to enhance business processes," Kelly says. "My perspective is that that is so broad. How do you get your arms around that? It doesn't really provide any guidance." Instead, Kelly says that any telecommunications tool can be part of a UC infrastructure if it offers presence, and if that presence is controlled through a unified interface such as IM.

On the other extreme, Gartner has a more crowded, and clearly no less accurate, six-element description. The firm says that UC combines any or all of the following: voice, conferencing, messaging, presence, clients and application integration. While Gartner's and Wainhouse's definitions are not mutually exclusive - in fact, they are pretty similar - the different approaches show that the industry is still struggling to crystallize the concept.

Unified Confusion

A few years ago, UC often was confused with unified messaging, which simply is the integration of messaging into one flow. People have a far more nuanced understanding today. Even if they don't know precisely what UC is, the emergence of GPS, follow-me/find-me offerings and other applications in which people seem to partner with devices and networks that are aware of where they are and what they are doing makes them intuitively understand that these platforms can be far more proactive and interactive. This is the essence of UC, so more people "get it."

The second step is that such support is more vital than ever as companies have less manpower to throw at problems. The key is that UC can solve corporate problems. Says David Marshak, an IBM senior product manager for unified communications: "The key discussion we are having with customers ... is how we can differentiate and compete using collaboration and communications. The questions customers ask are such things as, 'How do save money?' 'How do we save travel?' 'How do we do more with less?' and 'How do we find the people in the organization that have specific knowledge, though there are fewer of them?'"

Michael Finneran, a principal of dBrn Associates, cites call centers as a good example of what UC can bring. He says that 10 percent of all calls received require outside expertise. A UC platform can quickly find somebody who can explain why a slate gray panel is not available for a particular model dishwasher or can upsell a subscriber from a video only to a "triple-play" voice, video and data plan. It can say on which devices that person is available and automatically bring them onto the call.

"Tying all those things together is a major benefit in productivity and better customer service," Finneran says.

New Apps, New Challenges

Applications that are migrating into the business from consumer precincts of the telecommunications and Internet worlds are adding more value to UC. They also are further eroding its definition. The continual addition of services is bound to happen as the network infrastructure grows more robustness and applications speak the same IP language and become more modular.

"A new definition of UC is emerging because of the widgetization, the component-based nature of the social Web," says Vanessa DiMauro, the CEO and president of Leader Networks, a firm that shows organizations how to use social networking applications. "There are more and more tools. What used to be pretty heavy technically now is pretty seamless, and it is free or low cost."

dBrn's Finneran agrees: "Basically those of us looking at how the business is evolving recognize that all these things are driven largely from the consumer space, such as texting and social networking. All of them are going to rshape how we do business. UC gives us a nice tidy word to describe the migration."

Entry into a new phase doesn't mean that the battles of the past will magically be settled. They just will move more fully from PowerPoint slides into the trenches. There is a lot of money in UC, and the behemoths - Cisco and Microsoft - are still circling each other. While they can't afford to prevent their products and platforms from coexisting and to some extent interacting in customer networks, each is trying to nudge the development path in its favor.

"Both are putting barriers in place so at the end of the day that company maintains call control," says Wainhouse's Kelly. "The company that controls call control, presence and IM, that is the company that is going to survive." Burton Group principal analyst Mike Gotta says that Cisco is trying to leverage its predominance in the network with acquisitions of companies such as WebEx to move strongly into the cloud. Evidence of that plan emerged this week with the introduction by the company of "medianets," the company's vision of the future of video and rich media networking.

Microsoft, meanwhile, is connecting three legs of a potentially very valuable stool, Gotta says. One leg is Office Communications Server (OCS), the second is Exchange, SharePoint and a deep bench of desktop offerings, and the third is the Visual Studio-based developer community. Cisco and Microsoft are the two biggest players. Two others are worthy of note, as well. Gotta says that IBM is playing a Switzerland-type role to cultivate relationships with companies that don't want to over-commit to the big two. Avaya, Gotta says, is in the least enviable position of the four because it aligned its presence play with the XMPP standard developed by Jabber, which was acquired by Cisco.

"There are multiple fronts to the battle. You could use a chess match metaphor," Gotta says. The two biggest players in the sector, Microsoft and Cisco, have different approaches. It's no surprise that the former thinks it is prudent to locate much of the intelligence at the edges of the network while the latter emphasizes the network core. The two have amassed large ecosystems.

Freeman says that the need to make heterogeneous UC implementations work will create lots of business for systems integrators, value-added resellers and other outsiders. Within organizations, familiar fights for control between the IT and telecom departments will continue. The bottom line is that UC is moving from exotic to mundane. Says Gartner's Elliot: "We are seeing more usage, more acceptance and more confidence that it is useful.