Streaming Meets Unified Communications: Convergence Is on the Way
Will social media and streaming platforms merge to meet enterprise communications needs? For almost 2 decades, enterprise video solutions have promised a day when they integrate seamlessly with videoconferencing, digital signage, and other enterprise communications solutions. It’s taken a while, but that day is here.
Well, it’s almost here. About 2 years ago, we could at least see it on the horizon. As 2017 begins, the small dot on the shimmering horizon has begun to take shape, a silhouetted outline of a lone cowboy, riding his trusty stallion and brandishing a mean sidearm...
Truth be told, it actually looks more like a cluster of rack-mounted equipment, with lots of wires and a few managed switches. 但是，要弄清楚这到底是统一通信牛仔屁股上的软件定义网络(SDN)，还是一系列离散的硬件组件，还有些遥远.
If you’re at all involved in enterprise streaming or videoconferencing, you’ve undoubtedly heard the term “unified communications” (UC) used in several different ways, often obliquely and to a particular vendor’s best advantage. In some ways that nebulousness is by design.
维基百科将统一通信概括为“一个营销流行语”，涵盖了一系列集成的实时企业通信服务:会议(音频和视频), instant messaging, presence information, voice, mobility features, audio, fixed-mobile convergence, desktop sharing, data sharing, call control, and speech recognition. At the end of the list, almost recursively, Wikipedia指出，所有这些实时企业通信服务都可以与非实时通信服务(如drumroll)集成, please) unified messaging (UM).
Where’s streaming in that long list of enterprise communications services? And does it fit in the real-time or non-real-time communications bucket? This article attempts to answer those two questions. Starting with the assumption that all communications matter, we will explore how streaming can unify a number of UC and UM use cases. Along the way, we will touch on a few topics, like latency and WebRTC, 这些值得专门的文章和详尽的解释——至少在本期的其他地方有一些报道 Streaming Media magazine.
Social Media and the Enterprise
Let’s first start with some insight on the intersection of streaming video and unified communications, thanks to work done by Wainhouse Research. Steve Vonder Haar, a senior analyst with Wainhouse, commissioned a study of 1,801 working adults in the United States as part of the research into UC, streaming video, and other enterprise platforms. The survey was a follow-up to an April 2016 report wherein Wainhouse Research surveyed 1,512名企业高管评估对流媒体解决方案的需求，这些解决方案支持对来自UC应用程序(如Skype for Business)的内容进行一对多分发, Cisco Jabber, and IBM Sametime.
这份最新的2016年第四季度Wainhouse Research“企业网络通信调查”被设计为一份真正的科学调查. It had up to 380 different segmentations, with guaranteed participation in specific categories—150 from IT, 100 from professional services, 85 from financial services—as well as intentional oversamples of IT and educational participants.
Wainhouse asked which two communications channels survey participants found most effective for lead generation. Surprisingly, traditional email and banner ads, which are often the primary channels for lead generation, did not rank as high as Facebook and YouTube. In fact, as this chart shows, Facebook topped the list of multiple-choice lead generation options, 49%的调查参与者指出，这是他们最有效的潜在客户生成渠道之一, followed by YouTube at 39 percent of all participants. Traditional email was next, with LinkedIn at 21 percent taking the fourth position.
“我相信社交媒体平台有机会支持企业，并以他们尚未理解的方式创造收入,” says Vonder Haar. “Social media platforms today are largely consumer-focused, similar to the AOLs and Yahoos of yesteryear. As we’ve seen in the past, when a communications platform is solely focused on the consumer market, they tend to decline and ultimately die off when attitudes change.”
To his way of thinking, Vonder Haar表示，社交媒体平台可以通过将其覆盖范围从用户的个人通信扩展到用户的企业通信来避免不相关或死亡. “Social media is at a crossroads, with slowing consumer growth, and need to find ways to monetize their audiences,” says Vonder Haar. “然而，他们有办法解决最紧迫的商业问题:在一个经过消费者测试的平台上吸引大量受众.”
Vonder Haar接着提到，社交媒体平台有观众，也有视频创作和分发平台, what he calls “the raw material for aggregating video distribution that delivers business benefit.”
So, if the Wainhouse Research insights from its recent survey are correct, social media platforms may turn out to be online video platforms (OVPs) in the near term. And unlike traditional OVPs, 这些社交平台既有工具，也有眼球，可以为企业市场提供经过实战考验的网络研讨会和网络广播平台.
如果社交平台选择超越潜在客户生成，并进入企业沟通，那将会怎样? 这可能是微软热衷于收购LinkedIn的一个原因:LinkedIn提供了一个现成的用户群. Another version of the narrative, though, says that Microsoft already has the video communications tools, which LinkedIn might need to catch up with Facebook and other consumer-focused social platforms.
Skype for Business
One of those tools widely regarded as integral to unified communications is Skype for Business.
“When survey participants were asked about their UC platform of choice,” says Vonder Haar, “Skype for Business is definitively identified as the market share leader in unified communications.”
该技术以前被称为Microsoft Lync(直到并包括Lync 2013)，现在正积极地集成到来自不同硬件供应商的硬件解决方案中. NewTek was one of the first out of the gate, with its TalkShow product that allowed incoming Skype calls to be cleaned up, including color and exposure correction, 并通过基于广播的串行数字接口(SDI)作为直播视频混频器的馈源输出.
NewTek calls TalkShow a tool to enhance “video calling for professional production workflows,它的目的是将其视频信号校正魔法添加到广泛使用的通信平台上，以创建“看起来很棒，听起来很棒的Skype采访”.”
虽然连接到TalkShow的Skype呼叫者不必使用Skype for Business应用程序, since TalkShow works just as well with the consumer Skype app, 除了在安卓和iOS设备上进行Skype对Skype通话之外，微软提供的这款面向企业用户的Skype应用还有其他好处. For instance, the newest Skype for Business 6.10应用程序现在提供了一种接听Skype商务电话的方式，就像用户接听手机电话一样:在锁定屏幕上滑动“接听”.
这种级别的无缝集成扩展到在标准手机通话和Skype for Business之间移动的能力, not unlike Apple’s own FaceTime Audio. Unlike Apple’s integrated VOIP app, though, 微软的Skype for Business也整合了活动目录(Active Directory)和SharePoint等企业软件. 与其他企业标准通信服务相结合的能力使微软重新回到了它几十年前创造的企业领域的最前沿. PowerPoint的粘性以及随后对Active Directory和SharePoint的采用意味着，微软正在使用Skype for Business完善其企业生态系统，就像苹果通过将硬件和软件紧密集成到单一用户体验中来增强其在消费者生态系统中的粘性时所做的那样.
User response to these unified communications features have been generally positive, 一位用户指出，在Wi-Fi上使用Skype for Business可以让用户看到演示内容，并称赞Skype for Business“在观看和加入会议方面更可靠”, transferring from the laptop when you have to get out the door, etc.,相比之下，早期版本的Skype for Business和Lync没有与SharePoint紧密集成.
In an attempt to continue the uptake of Skype for Business, Microsoft has followed Google’s lead and begun to release beta versions and request feedback from users. Its new Skype Preview.com是一个门户网站，微软鼓励用户通过提供新产品或新功能的早期访问权来帮助“塑造Skype的商业未来”. “它使您的组织能够抢先了解即将到来的内容，并在您自己的环境中测试新功能，并在我们向公众发布产品构建之前提供反馈,” the site states.
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