Industry News and Blogs

We know it's important for us to understand what's going on in our industry, and we believe it's just as important for you. Being informed is a great way to ensure you are making the right decision. Enjoy some articles on telecom, hosting, voice services, and cloud computing.

Exploring Hosted VoIP for the SMB in the New Economy
According to Frost and Sullivan's report "North American Hosted IP Telephony Service Markets," close to 1 million installed hosted IP telephony lines were installed at the end of 2008. The firm expects the number to grow to about 3.6 million lines in 2014. With numbers like that, it's worth looking into why some companies are pursuing this route into hosted-IP communications. 

Unified Communications to Grow by 50% to 30 Billion by 2013
UC service providers should see rapid growth due to the complexity of premises-based UC solutions. In the premises-based UC solutions market, we expect to see declining revenues for PBXs, audio bridges, and unified messaging solutions.

Top 10 Hot Technology Trends for 2010
The extended enterprise – which consists of a business and its employees, customers, suppliers and partners – is a growing trend requiring an IT architecture that enables companies to deliver services and applications to anyone, anywhere, on any device, at any time and to do it seamlessly, reliably and securely. Borderless businesses are embracing the use of video, collaborative applications and other networked services and delivering them across the enterprise, using technology that can more easily be managed and scaled.

10 ways the cloud will reshape voice
There is considerable discussion about the oncoming impacts of cloud computing and how it will reshape (or eliminate) the enterprise data center. But until recently, there has been relatively little discussion about how cloud technologies will impact telecommunications, or specifically enterprise voice.

VLAN's maximize VoIP investments
Although there may be no such thing as a dumb question, there is a persistently misguided one involving VoIP deployments: Should VoIP be installed on a dedicated network separate from the data network?

Make Way for a New Generation of Carriers
As a result, while many IT organizations are still retaining the concept of unified communications over a lower-cost IP network, they are finding someone else to run it. And with that shift, they're discovering an additional benefit. The new generation of carriers can tell customers things about their calling patterns that they never knew before.

Why the 'life line' of your business may be pulling you under
In recent years, we have seen tremendous growth in competition within the telecom industry. However, the large carriers still exploit small businesses with their appealing brand but 'smoke and mirrors' services and products

Top 10 Enterprise Communications Market Events of Past Decade
As we come to the end of the calendar year we will see many newspapers, magazines, and, of course, blogs running Top 10 lists for the first decade of the century in a particular field or market. So why make an exception? I present my list of the Top 10 events in the enterprise communications market during the past decade.

Why look at the cloud?
Our Virtual VoiceCon event this week had a session devoted to prospects for cloud-based communications systems, and the IBM speaker, Apratim Purakayastha, showed some interesting slides about where enterprises see value in cloud-based services.

VoIP and CRM Integration
A growing number of businesses are looking at VoIP's cost, productivity and efficiency benefits and are deciding that the technology makes a good fit with their CRM systems. Besides its cost advantages, VoIP allows businesses to document interactions between employees and clients, a capability that isn't generally possible with traditional telephony.