Greetings from sunny San Francisco! I’m here this week for VoiceCon, where unified communications (UC) is the hot topic. The conference started in earnest on Tuesday morning, and so far includes a nice mix of technical advice as well as higher-level discussions (and debates) about the future of UC.  

One of the first sessions of the conference actually covered an even more basic topic: Just what do we mean by unified communications in the first place? While difficult to define, after taking in a number of the presentations here, this is my stab at it: 

Essentially, an enterprise UC environment is one in which network users can easily determine one another’s availability and communicate with one another using any number of tools (be it IM or VoIP , for example), whichever is most convenient at the time.  

The key to achieving value from UC in the enterprise, most here agree, is the ability to embed UC directly into business processes. For example, with UC capabilities built in, an account manager can not only identify but also get in touch with a colleague or customer directly through Salesforce.com. He or she can see if the person they need to talk to is online or not, figure out the best way to get in touch with that person, and with a click of a mouse do just that. 

The bottom line: UC is all about improving communication effectiveness.  

But I want to know what you think. Got a better definition for unified communications? Well, speak up and let’s get the conversation started!