Unified Communications/Voice Solutions

Small businesses generally spend more on telecommunications services and equipment than on any other area of their IT investment. Unified communications technology can change that while improving efficiency and productivity at the same time. Once attainable only by enterprises, it's now a viable option for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs).

For their money, managers at SMBs want phone systems that are capable, reliable, and flexible. Unified communications systems can provide just that and also deliver productivity-boosting, money-saving features beyond those available just a few years ago. Here's a look at the basics and benefits.

• The Basics
• Solutions
• What to Watch For
• Bottom-Line Impact
• What to Do Next

The Basics

To understand unified communications, you need to understand Voice over IP (VoIP), which is technology that digitizes sound, divides that sound into packets of information, and transmits those packets over an IP network. VoIP evolved into IP telephony, essentially delivering sound to the desktop through IP phones.

Unified communications takes IP telephony further:

• Ties together telephone, voice mail, e-mail, and information services (such as Web browsing, business applications, and videoconferencing), making them all available via familiar-looking telephone equipment.
• Has all the features commonly associated with PBX and Centrex systems, such as voice mail, presence management, find-me/follow-me functions, telephone directories, and least-cost routing.
• Uses network routers, switches, software, and other standards-based networking gear to provide these capabilities instead of relying on proprietary equipment.
• Make services traditionally associated with the data network available via the phone system, and vice versa, because voice and data, and now video use the same network.

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Solutions

Individual businesses can build on the communications platform in ways unique to their needs. You'll always have basics such as voice mail, but beyond that, the sky's the limit. Channel partners provide most unified communications solutions to SMBs. Although these systems are generally easier to maintain than traditional PBX systems, they work best when installed and configured by experts. Channel partners are important because they can match the products of equipment vendors with your organization's requirements.

Some channel partners are generalists, and others specialize in communications as part of an overall IT plan. Others focus on particular industries or geographic regions.

What to Watch For

Unified communications systems are especially well-suited to larger SMBs with multiple locations. One reason is least-cost routing, which lets you maintain a high-quality data connection between the headquarters and the branch office without being charged for calls that travel over that connection. Quality of service (QoS) becomes an important consideration in these implementations.

Bottom-Line Impact

Unified communications can save money in several ways:

• When voice and data travel over the same network, you don't need to maintain a separate telephone network.
• Installation costs for new systems drop by 40% to 60% because you only need to install one infrastructure instead of two.
• Once they're installed, they're less expensive to run: A Yankee Group study showed that VoIP systems cost about 22% less to operate than circuit-switched networks.

Productivity benefits also come from converged systems. For example, IP-based unified communications resulted in less employee "phone tag" for 50% of organizations surveyed by Sage Research ; that increased productivity added up to 3.9 hours per week per employee, or 25 days per employee per year. For others, the savings may simply come from having reduced hardware requirements and operating expenses.

What to Do Next

Companies interested in unified communications should look for a service provider, reseller, or equipment vendor that understands their business and its particular challenges. Then, conduct a technical assessment of the current company network. If the current network isn't up to the task, you might need new routers, switches, and even cabling. As a general rule, the older the network, the less likely it is to handle unified communications; if a network is more than five years old, there's a good chance it will need significant upgrades.

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