TABLE OF CONTENTS Unified communications are like relationships. We all want em, we all have em what do we do with em? (with respect to Jimmy Buffet for that one). In all seriousness, you should ask yourself some important questions regarding unified communications:
What is my (or my company s) view of unified communications?
What kind of real ROI can I find from unifying my independent systems?
Realistically, how can I integrate my systems while not destroying my budget?
Which components or products make the most sense for my business?
In this chapter, we will explore these very questions, and help you come up with the answers. Because this book focuses on Microsoft technologies, we will also look at many of the Microsoft products that have brought us to the present-day solution that we will be focusing most of our attention on in this book: Office Communications Server (OCS) 2007.
Before we look forward, it s a good idea to step back and look at how we got to today. To begin, we will review the progress and history of communication over the past 150 years, and how it has impacted where overall information delivery and communication are going.
You can breathe a sigh of relief. We re not going to take you all the way back to the caveman and discuss cave drawings. Likewise, Egypt and those amazing hieroglyphics are out. We re going to jump in right around the time of Mr. Alexander Graham Bell.
