I don’t know about you, but I’ll be glad when VoiceCon arrives. By then the election will be behind us and we can focus on moving forward, leaving behind such distractions as Sarah Palin’s glasses and Barack Obama’s middle name.

I mention the election only because choosing a Unified Communications (UC) strategy is similar to an election process. With so many definitions of UC out there, understanding just what it means is a challenge in itself. Just like the proposed economic policies of the presidential candidates, to really understand what UC means, you have to step back and look at it from many angles.

For example, what does UC mean to employees? For one company, it may be a matter of providing an office number that rings on both their wireless device and landline phone with a unified mailbox. For another company, it may be a matter of streamlining wireless and wireline networks to form a unified network that supports voice, video, data and other applications across a plethora of devices and technologies. And for another company, it may be just a matter of streamlining their trunk lines through a single IP connection, eliminating the need to manage multiple networks.

Regardless of how you define UC, we can all agree that it brings a multitude of benefits to the enterprise. How you cast your vote for the right UC candidate will depend on how you see it benefiting your organization and delivering the best possible ROI.

By the way, if you’re at VoiceCon, I’ll be speaking on Tuesday, November 11, at 1 p.m. on the panel “Fixed Mobile Convergence: The Hows and Whys.” It should be an interesting panel, covering everything from WiFi to next generation FMC, which gives users all the benefits of cellular, integrated with their PBX. The varying perspectives about FMC that will be presented will surely make for an interesting discussion.