Artilium

Thursday, September 20, 2007

Unified Communications Takes Off

The term “unified communications” is a commonly used as the integration of telephony and desktop computers, applications, mobility and media. This convergence potentially includes the integration of voice both fixed and mobility, email, instant messaging, desktop and advanced business applications, voicemail, fax, video conferencing into a single environment offering the user a more complete and simple experience.

Until now, the market was dominated by network hardware vendors with the addition of some niche software vendors. Over the past few years however, Microsoft has been building an integrated suite of Unified Communications based around its Windows Server and Exchange platform. On the telecoms side, companies like Artilium and the network operators have been moving into convergence with solutions that transfer calls and communications across mobile, fixed, ATM and IP/Internet networks. Today, the merging of IT with telephony is making it possible to realize the full potential of Unified Communications.

With the ubiquity of the Internet and the cost of bandwidth going down, combined with the ease of use of the Microsoft product range, Unified Communication technologies come within reach of the Small- and Medium-sized Business (SMB) market. The easiest way for SMBs to access Microsoft’s Unified Communications solutions is to work with an outside hosted provider. This enables SMBs to gain the advantages of new technologies, evolve with the new technologies and avoid the cost and hassle of purchasing and maintaining servers. More important, hosted mailboxes combined with hosted voice allows SMBs to more effectively manage overall communications and respond rapidly to customer questions where ever and whenever.

Recently Gartner released its Magic Quadrant for the Unified Communications market and gave top marks to Microsoft for its Unified Communications solutions.

For the full article, click here

picture (c) Gartner, 2007