Enterprise VoIP Technology Isn't Done Growing Yet. Are You Ready?
October 13, 2015
By Tracey E. Schelmetic
TMCnet Contributor
Enterprise communications today have changed so radically, that even a person who retired only five years ago might not recognize the way businesses communicate today. The ubiquitous desktop telephone that sat next to a desktop computer – once a staple in offices across the world for decades – is beginning to disappear. Workers have radically changed the way they communicate, and in most cases, it’s for the better.
At the root of the shift in enterprise communications, of course, are voice over IP (VoIP) and cellular technologies. VoIP has been the great enabler of unified communications (UC) and collaboration, remote working, home-based employees, omnichannel customer support and reduced telephony costs. VoIP technology enables companies to operate their UC platforms with a broad, customizable feature set. For example, employees can make calls directly from their e-mail inbox and choose the ability to transcribe the call. They can have voicemails transcribed and sent to e-mail, or have emails converted to voice files and sent to voicemail. They can have virtual meetings, collaborate remotely on the same document or desktop, and be a hands-on part of a project even from the road.
The good news is that VoIP technology is still evolving, and the benefits it will bring to the enterprise in the years to come will only expand, according to a recent blog post by ISI (News - Alert) Telemangement Inc.’s Darlene Jackson.
“Industry insiders are suggesting that in just a couple years, at least 75 percent of new offices won’t ever use the hard phone and the public switched telephone network (PSTN),” wrote Jackson. “In its place will be VoIP, with heavy reliance on the personal computer as a soft phone with a VoIP client, or mobile phone technology that will act in the same way as your desk phone once you leave the desk. These same analysts are predicting that the norm for interactions will become video plus screen sharing hence the growth of VoIP in this scenario.”
While older workers slow to embrace technology changes may view the new developments with dread, younger workers – who are already used to mobile technology, VoIP applications and collaboration – will embrace them wholeheartedly. To take advantage of the changes, however, enterprises will have some tasks ahead of them: they will need more bandwidth to enable all their VoIP applications, they will need to determine what their future needs might look like so they can plan ahead, and they will need to embrace technologies like Session Initiation Protocol (News - Alert) (SIP) trunking, according to Jackson, particularly if they wish to truly empower their VoIP system.
“Businesses benefit from SIP trunking technology because it makes your VoIP solution more centralized and cost-effective,” she wrote. “When you have many offices, using different technologies and carriers, the addition of centralized SIP trunking allows better management of multiple locations and bandwidth across the company from a single web dashboard. Unused trunk capacity at one site can be used to avoid a loss in quality due to a spike in traffic at another site i.e., you can prioritize voice and maintain quality-of-service (QoS). When you have enough bandwidth, upgrading SIP trunks is simple.”
Whatever your company’s future goals, ensure your technology plan has a long-term component. Chances are, you will need to embrace a more robust platform and service to be in a good position to expand and take advantages of all the opportunities VoIP has to offer.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi