IP Telephony and Unified Communications

Business Telephony has changed, the ability to route telephone calls over both local area networks and wide area networks enables businesses to benefit from lower call charges, extend the reach of their systems by VPN and soft-phones, and enables a business to integrate their telephony system with Line of Business applications such as CRM and ERP systems.

There is little doubt that taking telephony out of the PBX and placing it in the infrastructure environment reduces complexity, but it also brings along a raft of additional benefits that will further justify the investment:

• Boost productivity:
  • Accelerate decision making and enhance collaboration by bringing people together over the network.
  • Increase the effectiveness of your staff while they are either remote or mobile.
  • Accelerate problem resolution by using a single point for all voice and web collaboration.
  • Click to call directly from desktop applications and your web browser without having to punch in numbers.
• Flexibility:
  • Extend your IPT system without adding incremental management costs.
  • Cut down on cabling – you will only need one cable to connect both a PC and phone at each desktop.
  • IP phones can be easily installed and removed, without having to reprogram the system.
  • Allows quick and easy integration of a new or temporary office, enabling the staff in the new office to quickly become a part of the company telephony network.

Reduction of costs and increased productivity are the core benefits of an IPT system, however as more and more application vendors start to provide integration with IPT systems we will see the productivity benefits grow substantially.

As businesses strive to provide high speed data networks combined with redundancy, high availability and scalability it makes perfect sense to run your voice communications across this readymade versatile communications highway.