Unified
Communications
and
Collaboration
The integration of different communication features
What is Unified Communications and Collaboration?
Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) is a concept describing the integration of different communication features such as:
- Voice (voice calls)
- Video (video calls)
- Instant Messaging (Chat)
- Presence (availability: available, busy, away…etc.)
- Mobility (ability to virtually use and move any extension number to a new location and seamlessly transfer calls to and from a mobile device)
- Web Conferencing (audio, video, chat, annotation, screen sharing, media transfer, meetings centers, training centers, and event centers)
- Unified Messaging (voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax)
- Contact Centers (call queuing, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), Automatic Call Distribution (ACD), omnichannel (voice, email and chat) agent desktop, monitoring and recording, supervisors’ desktops, business call flows and custom scripting, Text-to-Speech (TTS), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), localization and transcription, wallboards, dashboards, CRM integrations, real-time and historical reporting, social media channels integration, and many more)
UCC Benefits
UCC allows all users no matter where they are located to have the same communication experience, it optimizes business processes and increases user’s productivity. It connects businesses to their clients and other businesses while reducing communication costs significantly.
UCC Deployment Types
UCC deployments can be done in three variants:
On-premises UCC Solution
UCC products can be hosted on-premises, which means the enterprise needs to take care of the maintenance, availability of the platforms and invest continuously on hardware but having full end-to-end control on their UCC deployment.
Cloud UCC Solution
Enterprises can purchase user based UCC subscriptions from a cloud UCC provider which is called Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS). In this type of deployments, the cloud provider will take care of the service maintenance, and guarantee the hardware and software availability, while customers pay for only what UCC services they use.
Hybrid UCC Solution
Hybrid UCC deployment is a mix of on-premises platforms and cloud services. Customers can benefit from a fully controlled on-premises solution while using some cloud UCC services such as web conferencing and contact centers.