Emerging Smart Service and Networking Technologies Facilitate Shared Intelligence via Unified Communication & Collaboration Platforms

The enterprises worldwide unify their business communication/collaboration channels in order to improve their employees' productivity, reduce the delays and costs associated with sharing of the business knowledge. Almost states that their employees use few different channels and applications for communication every day. However, the paradox is that more tools do not imply more effective collaboration. Besides, the Unified Communications and Collaboration (UCC) concept enables people to use the most appropriate communication medium for the task to be done and to switch channels as necessary. The value of unified communications lies in the integration of previously separate communications channels into one seamless platform. This is, however, also where the most challenges lie. To do this in practice, organizations need to integrate diverse systems and technologies. As a possible solution, an efficient business model of the migration towards UCC and its architectural realization Next Generation Network is needed. This challenge was in turn a driver to perform the research presented in this paper.