On the Internet, every website is known by its URL. Now, what if you as an individual had a similar identification number? You would not be constrained by the device or the place from where you work. Conversations would follow you seamlessly from one device to another. If you were at your office, calls would be routed to your desk phone, PC or laptop. If you moved out of your office, a presence indicator would automatically know your status and transfer your call to your mobile phone.

Welcome to the new world of Unified Communications (UC), where functions are independent of devices and everyone is just a click away. A small percentage of the scenario envisaged above is already happening, and in the future, this is likely to become more common and sophisticated.

Till date, the focus of companies in the UC space has been on the technology front. This has led to many significant developments in open standards, video compression capabilities and bandwidth requirements.

In the future, the next level of adoption will come due to the ease of use of technologies. As the success of every Apple device has showed us, usability is critical to the success of products, and this will be the case for the adoption of UC technologies too.

“With changes in workforce trends, old communication tools and interfaces too have to change. In the future, rather than the user associating with the device, the device will associate with the user,” says Minhaz Zia, National Sales Manager, UC, Cisco India and SAARC.

"The key success factor with UC is embedding the solution and the benefits it brings into a user’s everyday business workflow” - Nick Hawkins, APAC Director, Technology Consulting Group, Polycom

This can be seen in the way user interfaces are changing. For example, Polycom recently announced Polycom Touch Control, an innovative device for Polycom room telepresence systems. The device allows users to control all aspects of their experience using a touchscreen device. This device was created to tackle issues the users experienced while using video conferencing systems. Using user interface design techniques from the mobile phone industry, the device allows users to easily navigate key functions by just touching universally recognizable icons.