White Paper: Gaining A Competitive Advantage Through Software-Based Unified Communications

This paper provides a perspective on some advanced communications and collaboration technologies that can help businesses gain a competitive edge. They should be deployed prudently, with a view toward protecting existing infrastructure and investments, on the one hand, and enabling future strategic objectives, on the other. More specifically, this paper explores the value of IP telephony and unified communications (UC), with a special focus on software-centric, SIP-based solutions.

Technology Improvements and Declining Costs Drive IP Telephony Adoption Over the past ten years, IP telephony has evolved and asserted itself as the communications foundation of the future. Although Frost & Sullivan estimates that only about 30 percent of the world's business telephony users are currently using IP endpoints, most businesses have already deployed either pure-IP or converged systems that can support IP telephony all the way to the desktops. The vast majority of all new telephony shipments are IP or converged systems.

Multiple trends are converging to drive further penetration of IP telephony into the business market. The technology has matured, and concerns over voice quality related to jitter, echo and packet loss are rapidly dissolving.