This article aims to educate on converged communications, looking at changes and some benefits that can be achieved through implementing a converged solution.
The market for Hosted IP is tremendously growing because it offers small and medium businesses benefits from the advantages of IP Communications, without investing in the education of IT staff and investing in expensive hard and software infrastructure.
In a typical small / medium business environment, a relatively small IT department has to deal with all IT and phone issues. In the daily small / medium business, IT experts have no time to play with new technology and gather knowledge and experiences in the long run. To build up and host full IP Communications internally, on a corporate level, would also mean investments in hardware and software and resulting in maintenance costs and time.
How can businesses take part in the VoIP adoption without huge investments?
Like for messaging in the early 90s, hosted services offer advanced applications while reducing costs on the business side. QoS (quality of service) is key for all IP Communications. Waiting 5 sec for an email to arrive in one’s inbox is acceptable while with Real Time Communications having a phone conversation and waiting for a voice packet 5 sec to arrive is unacceptable. So relying on experts to host IP services and grant uptime and scalability is a fast and an easy way to use and profit from IP Communications.
What are the benefits of IP Communications?
For some industry experts the main benefit of VoIP is reducing costs for long distance calls. But the benefits are far more. IP Communications centralize all communications and provide flexibility. This freedom is enabled via SIP becoming the standard for IP Communications and providing registrar services. IP Communications become smart and provide freedom for clients and different ways to communicate.
An example; Sales Manager John is traveling. Via IP Communications and SIP registrar services, his clients can reach him via one single account:
-Being in the office he communicates via his SIP phone.
– Sitting in a hotel lobby while traveling and working with his laptop, he can take the call via a soft phone or even via Windows Messenger and a headset. He also can chat with his colleagues via Instant Messaging securely with TLS encryption.
-Being not available for a call he receives the voice mail in his inbox. He can archive the message, forward etc.
-Being without internet access he routes incoming calls to his mobile.
Ideally, everyone, everywhere, would have one single account for all types of communications (IM, voice, email). Users are enable to enjoy the flexibility, convenience and cost savings of direct IP to IP and IP to PSTN communications such as IM, VoIP, video conferencing and presence, without having to first ask their contacts which system they’re using.
Cody James Miller
Fastmetrics