Beatrice Piquer-Durand Vice President Marketing Ipanema Technologies

Enterprises deploying Unified Communications (UC) expect to approximately halve legacy enterprise voice systems costs (conferencing, instant messaging, internal voice, integrated administration, lower long distance charges…) and to improve their business processes (contact management, accelerated collaboration, seamless information sharing, business process integration, improved customer satisfaction…).

Recent research about UC deployments from major vendors (Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft Lync and ShoreTel) demonstrated an average Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of $36 per user and per month, without WAN circuit costs and long distance charges...

	Josselin Ollier, CIO of Nature & Découvertes

Learn how Nature & Découvertes leverages new applications to improve customer service.

Nature & Découvertes is a French retailer with 83 stores and 1,100 employees, specialized in consumer products compatible with principles and practices of sustainable development, responsible consumption, and protection of nature.

Ipanema helps Nature & Découvertes to deliver a unique customer experience through guaranteed application performance. The information system can support new technologies such as interactive display windows, store shelves, pure mobility and geolocalization…

	Thierry Grenot Executive Vice President Ipanema Technologies

Beatrice for Ipanews: What are the business challenges of UC?

TG: Unified Communications (UC) offer huge opportunities for the enterprise, with benefits including improved productivity, easier collaboration, better customer satisfaction and ultimately higher profits through more efficient teamwork and competitive advantage. But UC come with their own distinct challenges and not every project yields the anticipated ROI.

Challenge 1: UC implementations are a significant investment. If they are to yield a good ROI and deliver a suitable user experience then their performance must be guaranteed as they rely heavily on the Wide Area Network (WAN).

Challenge 2: UC are made up of data, video and voice flows with dynamic, variable traffic and grow or subside based on user demand. A single desktop video flow means upwards of 300-500 Kbps between branch office sites. In turn, this can result in UC applications impacting the performance of other business critical applications during peaks of high demand.

Challenge 3: UC encourage desktop to desktop video communication which is wonderful for productivity but which places enormous strain on inter-branch WAN links that carry this traffic. Traditional static Classes of Services (CoS) are not able to match such complex traffic situations and overall business application performance is put at risk...