VoIP and Unified Communications: Internet Telephony and the Future Voice Network

PREFACE

This book intends to prepare you to define Unified Communications (UC) for yourself and then get it to work for you.

Each vendor pulls together from its available products a package of features related to voice, data, messaging, and image communications. That’s UC for one vendor, but it’s unlikely to match exactly the UC from another vendor. You need a detailed specification to know what you’ll see installed.

Second, UC isn’t a magic button that solves every problem. On the contrary, careless attempts at UC can create expensive disruptions to your business. Be certain when you deploy UC that it actually enhances your business model or improves processes. Don’t do it just because everybody else is doing it. Planning for UC is an ideal opportunity to examine how you work, with a goal of reducing complexity.

Third, VoIP and UC may reduce overall costs in the long term, but it’s not free. Nemertes Research interviewed hundreds of companies that deployed VoIP to find the average first-year expense; it was over $1400 per employee. UC features would be additional.

So here’s the catch: you can’t plan UC very well unless you know what components and functions are available, how they work, how they work together, and how you can use them profitably in your own situation. In addition, some features, for example voice telephony and high-definition video conferencing, will impact your IP network in ways you might not expect. Other features, like Presence, may not operate well across ...