The other day I wrote a post about unified communications, and how I feel the term "Unified Communications" (UC) is in danger of becoming too fuzzy to be practically useful.  While anecdotal evidence suggests that the term is gaining momentum at incredible speed, I noted that its definition seems to be becoming muddied in direct correlation with its popularity.  Don Price does a good job of summing up my view on this topic:

"It is interesting and I tend to agree in a perverse way [that] just about any application could be part of [a] UC experience. Once convergence is complete for all IT services then the boundaries where a person communicates and where they are just using IT systems will be hard to distinguish. Yet without clear  definition of a label, and what it applies to, it is very hard for us to move a concept forward."

Bingo.  My post answered the question of what UC means to me (a consistent communications experience transparent across all communication channels, emerging from a unified online identity), I was curious what UC means to others who use it on a regular basis.  So I posed the question to the UC Google group, which is made up of UC analysts, vendors, customers, and consultants.  They had some interesting input on their definition of UC, almost none of which jived with mine :)

• "My initial opinion is that the definition of UC should involve a key reference to Presence which to me seems a key component of the UC." - Mike England
  • My take:  I agree with this assessment, and presence seems to come up repeatedly from various people.  This makes me believe that XMPP will be a fundamental technology in UC, especially considering that it's baked into the new iPhone.
• "UC to the end user is about knowing who is available when and how AND then having the tools easily available to reach them from within a unified interface... [and] leveraging network and telephony infrastructures to utilize economies of scale to reduce costs." - Herb Pyles
  • My take:  Presence by any other name sounds just as sweet.  The idea of a unified interface to utilize many different forms of communication is just now becoming viable with widespread adoption of smart phones, especially the iPhone.  (If you start to get the idea that I think Apple will be a big player in the UC space you'd be right!)
• "In a perverse way, essentially [every] piece of equipment connected to the IP network is UC and any application running on those devices [is] UC." - Kip Heuertz
  • My take:  I agree, and that's the main reason I started this discussion.  If the definition isn't nailed down fast, UC is in danger of becoming meaningless.
• "UC is a vision or philosophy that leads to solutions - it is not a product." - Blair Pleasant
  • My take:  This makes a whole lot of sense from an English standpoint, however the "UC as a product" train has already left the station.  "UC as an architecture" DOES in fact make more sense than "UC as a product", but when MAJOR companies are selling "UC as a product" I think that's a battle that will not be easily won.
• "You cannot call a communications vendor and buy UC as a product - no SKUs I know of. It is a solution, not in the sense of the traditional sense of a 'vertical solution'. This solution is made up of multiple "features" that can be viewed in a modular sense." - Herb Pyles
  • My take:  This is one of my favorite definitions.  Or rather, anti-definitions.  UC is the sum of its parts, which enables the UC philosophy.  That makes a lot of sense to me.
• "To be unified means the services are accessible (not Section 508) from any of the elements... Whatever the underlying technology used to support accessibility it is [a] set of services which make such interchanges work as demanded by the user." - Don Price
  
  • My take:  Aha!  A PRACTICAL definition of UC!  I really like this, in fact.  It is a practical definition which is usable when setting a strategy.

I really like Don's definition.  It is actually USABLE in the sense that you can build an architecture around it, and it adheres to the "philosophical" definition of UC as defined by many others.  UC as an architectural philosophy demands that all of the elements of the communications network be usable by any other element and they work together in the manner that the user desires.  In that sense it is an extension of both the Web 2.0 "make everything re-usable by the user" philosophy and the service-oriented architecture "expose your functionality on the network" philosophy.

The one thing that nobody but me seems to care about is the online identity aspect.  This is so key, in my opinion, but I could be off base here as I'm the only one talking about it.  However, I don't think I am, and I think this idea going to enter the discussion in short order as Apple is quickly forcing the issue.