Do UC the Lync – AV Systems and Unified Communications Part 1

People mention UC a lot in corporate settings these days.  What is it?  And should AV integrators be involved?

The UC (Universal Communications) conversation often begins when a customer asks you to integrate a conference room into their Lync deployment.  Let’s talk for a moment about what they are asking for, and why.

So What Do They Want?

All that video in their homes (Skype, YouTube, NetFlix) makes them want the same thing in their workplace.  The question is how well this new video thing will work with what is already on their desktops, in their conference rooms, in their home offices and on the road.  The answer is usually – it must work, and it must be seamless.  UC makes that possible.  Hence our interest.

Lots of companies have already chosen a UC platform, usually Lync, and everything else — telephony, videoconferencing, collaboration, anything you add — has to be able to fit that UC strategy.

An Infonetics Survey of North American enterprises recently showed that 88 percent polled said they plan to add videoconferencing to their UC system by 2015.

 Defining UC

To further understand UC, think about what we use in our corporate offices:  telephony, IM/chat, presence, softphone, unified messaging, corporate directories, contact center, audio conferencing, video conferencing, collaboration, audio messaging, etc.

In an ideal UC universe,  you could schedule and control all of these aspects from an application on any device, even use PCs, tablets and smartphones as deskphones and videoconferencing endpoints.

Less expensive, more efficient, shinier.

Opportunity For An AV Integrator

More video means more videoconferencing, projectors, flat screens, control panels, all of which we love.  So more business for us.

Of course some of our customized rooms may give way to smaller huddle and collaboration spaces.  Will we handle them, or will IT?   The same rooms call for simplified control.   Hall Research has created a simple room control system to help address that concept, for example.  So less business at times.  Or maybe just different.

Summing up:

Doing What UC Vendors Cannot

AV integrators are usually not going to find their success in UC deployments.  For example, in an existing Lync deployment,  the company usually owns an existing hardware and software backbone, so to add videoconferencing throughout the organization is just an incremental cost.   They get Lync plugins for their Exchange servers and they are done.

AV integrators must play on this field.  That being said, what UC cannot do is fold the magic of attractive, glossy and seamless display + control into these same corporate meeting spaces.  IT people cannot put Minority Report style collaboration systems (Example: T1V Thinkhub Touch Collaboration) into that room, integrated with touch panels, acoustic treatment and surround sound.

No matter what, UC is here to stay, and presents significant opportunities to AV integrators who understand it.  We owe it to ourselves to become conversant with UC in all it’s common forms.  If we do not address the UC space, we will likely find an AV strategy that is dictated by outside forces; AV integrated into UC, not the other way around.

Dave Fahrbach