Architecture in the Business Context

Business needs and technical resources determine what Uni ed Communications technology and functionality your organization should deploy. To establish the best UC implementation, you need to consider not only all the components that make up an UC solution and how those components interact with the other elements of your IT infrastructure. You also need to examine the level of business and technical capability that your organization can support. The Platform Vision model represents the components of UC implementation as a solution pattern. The UC solution pattern comprises three stages of evolution that correspond to business needs in order of maturity. The UC solution patterns three stages are: Enable, Enhance, and Unify. Each stage builds on the previous stage in terms of business requirements and technical complexity. The model progresses from enabling e-mail, calendaring, voice mail, IM and presence, voice over IP (VoIP), audio, video, and Web conferencing; to enhancing UC with regulatory and compliance mechanisms; to federated communications with partners, customers, suppliers, and vendorsadding business value along the way.

Uni ed Communications
The Uni ed Communications solution pattern represents a contextual and dynamic personal communications solution tied directly to relevant business processes and integrated within and across applications and devices. This solution pattern covers remote and mobile access to e-mail, calendar, and contactsonline and o ine, within and outside the organization. It also focuses on integration of voice mail and fax from within the same client interface. It allows line of business (LOB) applications to have integrated instant messaging capabilities and rich online presence information. Integrated conferencing solutions can provide a rich multimedia experience that includes data collaboration, audio and video, and multiparty conferencing for internal and remote users. In the platform context, the Uni ed Communications solution pattern covers how the communications infrastructure is integrated with the security, management, and information protection layer across the organizationand with centralized reporting. Messages and conversations can be archived for regulatory compliance, legal discovery rules, and internal records. Ultimately, fully federated Uni ed Communications can facilitate communication between partners, vendors, and other external entities. Architectural prerequisites: Infrastructure and Management, Security and Management, Data and Management, and IT Process. Architectural recommendations: ECM and Collaboration, User Experience, SOA and BPM, and Cloud. Solution patterns it enables: User Experience, ECM and Collaboration, and Web and Social Computing.

The diagrams on this poster illustrate how the Uni ed Communications solution pattern integrates with other solution patterns throughout three stages. These views show architectural prerequisites for Uni ed Communications at each stage. In addition, you can see architectural recommendations for a mature Uni ed Communications implementation.

Users

STAGE 1 STAGE 2 STAGE 3

To increase the productivity of

employees by providing the ability to respond quickly to messages including e-mail, IM, and voice mail from home, work, or on the go.

To o

er employees a fast, seamless, and familiar experience across di erent devices and clients by providing rich UC experiences across the PC, phone, mobile device, and browser.

To provide employees, partners, customers, and

vendors with contextual and role-based access to the UC environment, which is integrated with LOB applications.

User Experience Stage 1:

Personal

User Experience Stage 2:

Comprehensive

User Experience Stage 3:

Contextual

User Experience

Familiar and Intuitive

To support a Web services-based

Uni ed Communications Stage 1: Enable

Uni ed Communications Stage 2: Enhance

SOA & BPM Stage 1:

application programming interface (API) to integrate the UC environment with LOB applications. Uni ed Communications Stage 3: Unify

Services

SOA & BPM Stage 1:

To support a Web services-based API to

Services

integrate the UC environment with LOB applications.

Uni ed Communications

SOA & BPM

Web and Social Computing

ECM and Collaboration Stage 1: Capture

and Manage

ECM and Collaboration Stage 1: Capture

and Manage

ECM and Collaboration

Business Intelligence

To make it easier for users to

LOB Systems
To ensure appropriate backup and service restoration plans and procedures to provide required service levels for e-mail.

nd and share data, documents, and tasks from almost anywhere by integrating Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Collaboration with the UC environment.

LOB Systems
To provide data management solutions that optimize performance and minimize compliance risks by archiving e-mail and all instant messages.

To make it easier for users to nd and share data, documents, and tasks from almost anywhere by integrating ECM and Collaboration with the UC environment.

LOB Systems
To provide data management solutions that optimize performance and minimize compliance risks by archiving e-mail and all instant messages.

LOB Systems

To provide protection against spam, worms, viruses, and phishing e-mail and ensure integrated ltering and scanning abilities.

Data and Management Stage 1:

Optimize

To ensure required controls are in place for messages in transport, provide fail-safe protection of the UC environment to avoid any communications delays, and to block inappropriate conversations and transfer of restricted le types. To comprehensively deploy and manage updates on UC servers and clients. To optimize hardware and networking investments to ensure seamless access to UC services during and after network outages.

Data and Management Stage 2:

Consolidate

To ensure that all communications with external entities, including federated and public IM networks, are scanned for malware without impacting service performance. To provide clustering and data replication abilities to keep the UC environment highly available, to meet quality of service (QoS) requirements, and to provide failover support to improve service levels and ensure business continuity. To comprehensively deploy and manage updates on mobile devices. To detect alterations in network conditions such as congestion or availability of bandwidth, and to prioritize or limit tra c accordingly.

Data and Management Stage 2:

Consolidate

Data and Management

Security and Management Stage 1:

Identify

Security and Management Stage 2:

Protect

Security and Management Stage 3:

Predict

To provide automated diagnostics and monitoring of the UC environment and to ensure secure access of LOB applications and corporate data on mobile devices. Infrastructure and Management Stage 3:

Security and Management

Infrastructure and Management Stage 1:

E cient Infrastructure

Infrastructure and Management Stage 2:

Intelligent Infrastructure

Automated Infrastructure

Infrastructure and Management

IT Process Stage 1:

De ne

IT Process Stage 2:

Report

To establish processes for message retention and journaling, and to support legal and regulatory compliance requirements. To establish processes for encryption to protect the con dentiality of messages in transit. To de ne processes and requirements for providing QoS guarantees.

IT Process Stage 3:

Correlate Balance

IT Process Cloud
To de ne, implement, and conduct continuous monitoring of service-level requirements for UC services and to support granular reporting and auditing abilities.

Investigate
To provide policy-based

Cloud Stage 1:

Cloud Stage 2:

Embed

Cloud Stage 3:
To appropriately balance

ltering by leveraging cloud-based services to reduce IT and administrative overhead.

To minimize the chances of

To establish processes for ltering and archiving data.

interruption to UC services, and to help guarantee service-level agreement (SLA)-supported optimal uptime and performance.

cloud-based and on-premises deployments of the UC infrastructure, to maximize business e ciency and to enhance security, availability, and performance.

Stage 1: Enable
At the Enable stage, the organization needs to provide users with an Uni ed Communications solution to help them more e ectively interact with each other and to more e ciently manage communication channels, priorities, and information. The organization at this stage provides secure remote access to e-mail and voice mailboth online and o ine. The organization also provides instant messaging abilities and real-time presence information for users. Employees can conduct online meetings with remote employees and share content, applications, and desktops in real time. At this stage, rich online presence information is integrated with desktop productivity applications. Employees have access to full Web-based Uni ed Communications functionality from within and outside the organization. The organization also provides users with real-time access to e-mail, voice mail, and calendar and contact information from mobile devices. The organization can easily integrate and interoperate with the existing telephony infrastructure to deliver a software-centric VoIP solution, without replacing the existing PBX systems. At the Enable stage, employees share calendars, task lists, and contact lists organization-wide and can synchronize this information for o ine use. The organization implements centralized security management with detection and protection mechanisms against spam, worms, viruses, and phishing. Uni ed Communications within and outside the organization also includes basic anti-malware protection and content ltering on instant messages.

Stage 2: Enhance
As the organization expands its Uni ed Communications e orts, it can focus on implementing a compliance strategy to provide protected access to most electronic communications including e-mail, instant messages, voice mail, and conferences. By integrating information protection with the Uni ed Communications environment, organizations can begin to protect users from unauthorized access to their communications. Voice mail integration extends to the messaging system and is accessible from standard clients. At the Enhance stage, IT enforces journaling and archiving policies to manage storage, expiration, and retention of messages for regulatory compliance and for internal records. IT implements contextual content ltering to prevent business information leaks. A single mailbox holds all voice mail, e-mail messages, and instant messaging conversations. Search across this uni ed mailbox is o ered for electronic discovery to satisfy compliance and legal requirements. The Uni ed Communications environment at this stage is integrated with LOB applications and functionality includes user-level presence information and access controls. Integrated audio and video conferencing provides a rich online meeting experience to internal and remote users for instant collaboration, and meetings are also centrally archived for compliance purposes. At the Enhance stage, service quality metrics for Uni ed Communications are managed proactively. QoS requirements are de ned to help ensure su cient network resources and optimal service levels for Uni ed Communications services. Granular controls help IT to authorize, monitor and limit the use of network management parameters such as available bandwidth. Organizations enhance their Uni ed Communications with improved service quality, reliability, and security features.

Stage 3: Unify
At the Unify stage, the organization further extends Uni ed Communications e orts to enable federated communications that connects employees with other users across organizational boundaries and with all the necessary controls to govern the ow of information. The Unify stage also enables federation of personal information, such as calendar and contacts, and enhances scheduling processes with partners, suppliers, and customers. Audio and video conferencing capabilities are extended to include partners, customers, and suppliers. A software-centric enterprise voice solution is enhanced to monitor, optimize, and deliver better voice quality in real time. In addition to enabling communications with external corporate users, the organization also enables employees to share presence information with users who are connected to public IM networks. IT establishes controls to authorize access to public IM connections and service providers, and even these messages are logged and archived. The organization o ers an extensible Uni ed Communications platform with rich APIs to integrate with business processes, which enables contextual and role-based communication. IT can establish a comprehensive approach to measure and monitor all parameters to optimize the user experience for UC services. The Unify stage provides an extensible and exible Uni ed Communications environment that streamlines communications and increases operational e ciency.

The business value of any technology implementation surfaces when you consider the expense and e ort of integrating that technology with your entire platform. The Advaiya Platform Vision model represents IT infrastructure as interconnected components, or solution patterns, that correspond to traditional IT service o erings. In addition to describing the requirements within each solution pattern, the Platform Vision model illustrates relationships and dependencies among the solution patterns. By examining how each element of your IT platform a ects the other elements, you can determine the cost e ectiveness and business value of any technology decision. Your IT infrastructures technical complexity and your organizations evolutionary stage shape how you approach a technology implementation. For each solution pattern, the Platform Vision model explains how that pattern is manifested in each of three stages of maturity within both the organization and technology. By using the Platform Vision model to assess your platform and your current capabilities, you can make informed business decisions that add long-term and short-term value.

Platform Vision is presented by Advaiya, Inc. www.advaiya.com | www.platformvision.com

2009 ADVAIYA, INC. REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART IS PROHIBITED. UC1.1.0.A