Do You Consider “Call of Duty” a Unified Communications Solution?

Defining a term or industry adequately is hard work. Here’s a perfect example– how do you define “life”? Many have tried; it grows, reproduces, undergoes a complex set of chemical reactions to maintain growth and reproduce, and responds to stimuli. Sound like a thorough explanation? Not so fast— fire does all of these things, but clearly it is not living. Despite the difficulty of defining “life,” we all have a reasonable understanding of what it means when something is alive. Unified Communications (UC) faces the same challenge. Clearly many factors comprise UC, but without a clear definition, it is hard to advocate for this important business transformation and develop programs to assist the industry-at-large in making the switch. Furthermore, without a clear definition, it’s hard to separate effective and qualified solutions from those that are simply “hitching a free ride.”

With this in mind, our newly developed CompTIA UC community has taken up the task of defining UC in its LinkedIn discussion group. Here’s a sampling of the group’s contributions to date: 

• Wikipedia does a reasonably good job of defining UC as “an integration of real-time communication services like video, voice and data that provides a consistent, unified, and highly collaborative user interface and experience.” 


• The overarching thought is that UC is not a single thing, but a collection of technology solutions that enhance real time communication.


• Solution providers are integrating UC into many business applications these days. We need to define UC based on the communication and collaboration needs of the business, and then address the technology that enhances this user experience.

Not a bad start, but consider this recent quote from Activision’s CEO Bobby Kotick (makers of the popular console game “Call of Duty”), "More people play 'Black Ops' every day than watch Jay Leno, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon, combined. The audience of 'Call of Duty' is probably greater in terms of size ... than in any other interactive form of entertainment." Given this assertion, would you consider “Call of Duty” a Unified Communications solution? Clearly it blends video, voice, and data for real time collaboration and communication–but just like my earlier differentiation between “fire” and “life”, it doesn’t pass the gut check test. In our hyper-technically connected world, real time interaction is becoming the standard and our traditional (and broad) definitions could take on a number of meanings. 

Another related point to ponder: do we really know what a “phone” is anymore? It could be a hard-wired device mounted on the wall, an application you access on your PC, or a smart phone you keep in your pocket that performs 1,001 tasks (one of those tasks being talking to someone over a cellular network - as in the traditional definition of phone).

 Despite all this confusion, the business opportunity for UC is real, with savvy resellers and vendors making money providing Unified Communication solutions to a diverse set of clients in every industry. Perhaps the best approach to defining it is to work backwards. We can start by stating that the greatest opportunity for UC is with the business community. These businesses need UC to more effectively address the operations challenges they face. Therefore, it appears that UC is a solution set (more than a technology) that allows organizations and their employees to effectively communicate and collaborate in real-time— to solve real-world problems using video, voice and data. Is this a sufficient working definition to start with, one that can move the industry forward and separate hype from reality? 

How would you define Unified Communications? Please feel free to post your thoughts below. If you are interested in learning more about UC and helping shape this important segment of our industry, please consider joining the new CompTIA UC community. Just send us a message expressing your interest at [email protected].