Last week, I discussed one reader's opposition to the growing use of presence and my assertion that unified communications in the future will look more like today's social networking sites. A reader of that newsletter had this to say:

“Well, I couldn't let this article pass without an opposing view. Having been in the industry for 20-plus years, I have seen a lot of innovations come and go, but nothing has the ability to more fundamentally transform corporations communication infrastructure than unified communications. Now, the end user states a common misconception about unified communications and, more specifically, presence. It is an often misstated issue that unified communications allows people to track your every move and locate you anywhere to the extent that your private and personal life are completely intertwined. No vendor worth considering has built such a system that is currently shipping. What unified communications and presence offer is the ability to be contacted by those who you wish to reach you at the time you wish to be reached and on the preferred device you want to be reached on.

Any credible vendor in this space is having to talk in more depth and in more detail than ever before. Why? Because unified communications requires an intricate understanding not only into the corporate workflow, but also corporate culture. Ultimately, companies need to work smarter, collaborate more globally, and be more productive with less. This requires removing the impact of human latency wherever possible. It is also where one of the key challenges of unified communications lies, because changing culture and habits is a tough task.”

The implication of the last point the reader makes is one with which I wholeheartedly agree: the success of unified communications in a given organization will depend to a large extent not on technology or cost, but on users’ willingness to adopt the technology. It’s fundamentally no different than the discussions we had 15 years ago about the adoption of Lotus Notes. Because Notes and information-sharing tools represented a paradigm shift of sorts in which people could benefit from the knowledge of others, corporate cultures had to be such that the technology could flourish. A corporate culture in which information hoarding and competition between employees is rewarded was less likely to allow tools like Notes to flourish. It’s no different today.

Michael Osterman is principal analyst of Osterman Research.