Beyond Cost Benefits: The Value of Next-generation Communications

A lire sur: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/voip-news/beyond-cost-benefits-the-value-of-nextgeneration-communications-59052

VoIP_News 6 days ago

To succeed in a demanding communications market, businesses have to take new approaches to customer communication. These approaches require strict focus, reliable tools, committed management, and organizational discipline. Next-generation communications is the new process platform for businesses in an era of advances in IP telephony.

A Phased Approach 

 The IP telephony market’s growing trends can be viewed as three phases. The first phase was the development of Voice over IP (VoIP), which is based on digital voice and data transfer over an Internet connection. VoIP technology was designed on the traditional model of computing following Moore’s Law, where performance doubled while cost went down over an 18-month period.

The second phase in IP telephony is to replace old analog phone systems with digital voice systems, with a significant amount of cost savings to IT managers. Replacing legacy voice systems helps lower cost and brings added functionality through video and data transmission over a broadband connection. Other capabilities, such as unified messaging, add to the benefit of replacing analog with digital systems. Through the addition of digital telephony and all the features and options available, businesses can become more mobile and stay better connected to their customers.

The third phase is based on value-added strategy. New trends in business and industry with greater global connections drive this phase. Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) has contributed to the pioneering of bringing a standardized signaling protocol among different vendors, phones, and IP hardware and software. Another advancement of IP telephony is Web services that present business applications for corporate communications. SIP and Web services connect processes and communications for business through automation. Automated business processes help to bridge the gap between traditional brick-and-mortar businesses with online businesses. Amazon Prime is a great example of this, offering consumers two-day free shipping on thousands of items that can be found at local stores. Through an automated process between warehousing and customer orders, Amazon is able to deliver products quickly and easily, with little wait time for customers to receive their purchases.

A New Look for IT and Telecommunications 

 Through the phases of IT telephony comes a new way of thinking about telecommunication and IT departments. No longer is IT management strictly for computer networking; now, it involves the role of managing voice communications. Through the design of IP telephony, network administrators can easily incorporate voice traffic over the existing IT infrastructure. IP telephony is server based, and IT managers are able to manage and store voice communications locally.

Telecommunications staff roles are now changing to service provider and dial plan management. Voice transport management is now the focus, which requires some new training and support to IT management. Telecommunication directors’ functions must be reassessed and repurposed with IP telephony.

The next generation of communications through IP telephony opens a world of cost-effective, dependable, efficient, stable, and available ways for businesses to plan and implement their customer communication. Businesses that still have legacy communications systems should start to develop a plan to phase into an IP-based system: They will benefit in the long run. Long-term benefits greatly outweigh the short-term costs for businesses that plan to remain competitive.

About the Author

Anthony Ortega has extensive IT support and systems engineering experience in government environments. A solutions-focused professional, he has led staff; worked in network operations support, information assurance, and change management; managed project software and licenses; and provided quality assurance. He has also developed coursework for VoIP, unified communications, and cloud computing for online colleges. Anthony is working on his Ph.D. dissertation in Organizations and Management, with a specialty in IT Management. He is an analyst with Studio B.