Communication in the “New World of Work”

Over the last two decades, innovations have brought the world closer together and have given people more ways to communicate with each other. The nature of the workplace, and of work itself, is fundamentally changing as enterprises free their employees to be productive from anywhere, anytime .

Changes in the “New World of Work” have brought productivity to new heights and have created a more mobile, global workforce, and the expectation that people are “always-on and always connected”. With this rapid transformation in the business environment, people need to manage more communications in multiple places. However, information workers and IT professionals struggle to manage multiple systems for communications: desktop and mobile phones, e-mail and voice mail, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging, and audio, Web and video conferencing. Today’s communications technologies work well independently, but their disconnected approach leads to broken user experiences and expensive management costs. Those companies that capitalize on the New World of Work to improve the way people communicate and collaborate are building better work environments for their employees, while slashing carbon footprints and the expenses that come with unnecessary resource use.

The Power of Software

Microsoft Unified Communication is a software solution that integrates with your existing Windows infrastructure and telephony systems. The two product cornerstones of Microsoft UC are Exchange Server – powering secure email, calendaring and voice mail – and Office Communications Server -- the platform for presence, instant messaging, conferencing, and enterprise voice for businesses around the world. Together Exchange and OCS give IT organizations the flexibility and control they need to better manage their communications infrastructure, and provide an extensible platform for communications-enabled business processes. Below are the key environmental benefits and features of Microsoft UC.

Streamline Communications Between People and Organizations

Presence is the key to allowing people to work anywhere. With presence, people can see the availability of others in the organization in real time, based on calendar information, login/activity status, and user preference. No need to walk down the hall to check if someone’s in their office or cube. Whether they’re working from home or down the hall, users can know when and how to connect with each other using the right communication method.

Enrich Productivity from Within Familiar and Easy to Use Office Applications

•	Click to communicate by e-mail, VoIP, voice mail, calendaring, instant messaging, and conferencing right from within Office applications.
•	Share your Outlook calendar with free/busy or the level of detail you wish to share to internal and external business partners for fast and efficient scheduling.
•	Streamline inbox navigation by automatically organizing message threads based on natural conversation flow - enhancing conversations and communications

“Anywhere Access” Communications enable Mobile and Telework

•	View e-mail, voice mail (voice to text transcription) and documents securely, right from your mobile device, kiosk or shared computer with a VPN-less connection
•	Call into your inbox and use voice commands to reply to or forward e-mails or to set, postpone or cancel meetings. View text transcription of voice mail messages without having to play the audio file.
•	Connect with voice over Internet (VoIP) to place or receive calls, single click team calling, dynamic routing and simultaneous ringing all from your computer, desk phone, mobile phone, a computer-based phone/device
•	Efficiently manage your calls by enabling delegates and team members to take your calls when appropriate or administrators to manage multiple executives all from a single location based on presence information.

Unified Conferencing replaces travel, reducing costs and carbon emissions

•	Bring together geographically distributed teams simultaneously and securely (internal employees and external partners) with real-time sharing of documents, and media with integrated voice, audio and HD video for conferences.
•	Quickly and easily share your desktop with colleagues through ad hoc desktop sharing in a single click; show or give full desktop access for editing
•	Start audio/web conferences with a single click from an active conversation or schedule right from within Outlook.
•	Participate in numerous topic-based, on-going, multi-party group chat discussions which allow people to engage in and out of a conversation and at the same time see conversation history

Provide an Interoperable and Extensible Platform Now and for Your Future

Microsoft UC integrates into your existing Windows infrastructure and telephony infrastructure. Both Exchange 2007 and OCS 2007 utilize Active Directory. Exchange and OCS integrate with your telephony infrastructure to provide software based voice mail and VoIP (forwarding, simultaneous ring, multi-party calls, etc.) to communicate with users on PBX, PSTN, and mobile endpoints.

•	With OCS, end users with desktop based video conferencing can connect directly to conference rooms with Polycom and Tandberg conferencing equipment.
•	Companies can extend Communications into business processes with a broad set of client APIs for Exchange and OCS that cater to Windows and reach clients on the desktop as well as mobile devices.

Cost effective, secure and reliable, Microsoft's software powered UC solution can enable IT to deploy a solution at scale, improving productivity and business outcomes across the company, while saving money and protecting the environment. Now that's good for business and good for the Earth.