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Wikipedia defines unified communications as follows:-

UC is "an industry term used to describe all forms of call and multimedia/cross-media message-management functions controlled by an individual user for both business and social purposes". This potentially includes the integration of fixed and mobile voice, e-mail, instant messaging, desktop and advanced business applications, Internet Protocol (IP)-PBX, voice over IP (VoIP), presence, voice-mail, fax, audio video and web conferencing, unified messaging, unified voicemail, and whiteboarding into a single environment offering the user a more complete but simpler and more effective experience.

Although I may be using the term in its loose sense, off late, there have been developments in the internet industry, which made me think of the expression – “unified communications on the net”. The specific developments are:-

1)   Microsoft declaring its hosted “productivity suite”, a collection of its popular solutions - Sharepoint, Exchange, LiveMeeting and Communications Server, offered as hosted products, at a joint monthly price.

2)   Cisco aquiring PostPath, an email and calendar software company, to reinforce its WebEx web conferencing software. As some blogs reported “Cisco said it will also extend the email and calendar functionality of its flexible software-as-a-service-based collaborative platform that includes instant messaging, voice, video, data, document management, and web 2.0 applications.”

3)   Google gradually building out its suite of online productivity software - Google Pages, Google Apps, Gmail, Gtalk etc, and positioning itself as a business solution, while solutions like Gmail and Gtalk have always been seen as consumer products.

The common thread in the above is rather obvious. The attempt to offer the following as a single hosted product – email, calendars, task management, contact management (traditionally called messaging software), document collaboration, intranet/extranet/webpage publishing and customization, forums, IM (they call it collaboration software), audio conferencing, whiteboard, application/desktop sharing, and online presentations etc (called web conferencing). How can one NOT call a single solution with all the above a “unified communications” or “total collaboration” solution.

Traditionally companies have had to look at three products to serve the above needs. Obviously, there are great synergies to be obtained from seamless data flow between these traditionally segregated solutions. For example, web conferencing, which is basically a way to set up meetings, would gain from being integrated with calendring, as it would gain from integrating with document management, as documents need to be distributed and collaboratively worked on during meetings. It would especially be benifical for growing organizations, which are complexity-phobic and cost-phobic to be able to access all the above features from a single web based console, at a reasonable monthly fees.

Exciting and heartening as the above developments are, one has to admit that the above attempts at an online unified communications solution are not quite there. Microsoft’s productivity suite just offers three pieces of the puzzle for a single pricing. Hosted Sharepoint, Exchange, LiveMeeting and Communications Server are un-integrated, and bare bones (vanilla) solutions, and not suitable for small organizations because they need to be configured and integrated to have a usable solution. Google doesn’t really have a web conferencing solution,  and to consider Gtalk as one is a stretch. Even otherwise, its products seem more suitable as end customer, stand alone products. And Cisco’s dream product is not here yet.

Quite suprisingly, there is another product, which is not as hyped as the above (although it is has been a well respected provider in the SMB domain for the last more than 8 years), which comes close to the “dream” solution. The solution I’m talking about is HyperOffice, a web based provider of “total collaboration” solution.

They have long provided integrated messaging and collaboration solutions under their fragship product, HyperOffice, which has been positioned as a “Sharepoint alternative” and “Exchange alternative”. Aspects of messaging, tie very logically with aspects of collaboration. The solution design is roughly as follows – “workspaces” for individuals with tools like personal desktop, mail client, personal document management, to do lists, personal address books, and personal calendaring etc. The second level is “workspaces” for groups (teams, departments, clients or partners) with tools like group desktop, group calendring, project management, group address books, group document management, forums, and polls etc. So an individual has access to his personal workspace as well as the group workspaces he is a member of. Recently, HyperOffice also launched HyperMeeting, its web conferencing solution, which integrates completely with HyperOffice and adds the missing piece to the puzzle. 

It scores on all the criterion of being complete, integrated, simple and ready to use.