Enterprise Communications Featured Article

Voice-over-IP (VoIP) is quickly replacing traditional office phone networks, a clear trend that anyone who glances at the industry can observe. While VoIP delivers a number of benefits, however, it is only part of the overall evolution of enterprise communications that currently is taking place.

Businesses are finding VoIP an attractive technology because it reduces call costs, adds features and brings greater mobility to an increasingly mobile workforce. But one other reason that the enterprise has adopted VoIP is its co-mingling with other digital communications, including chat, SMS, video conference and presence. VoIP is the voice component of a larger unified communications  and collaboration (UC&C) strategy for many firms.

“Customers are no longer looking for a simple telephony solution but rather complete UC&C capabilities,” noted a recent Tadiran (News - Alert) white paper on enterprise communications in the 21st century. “Whether they need it now or plan to expand their local service in the future, they all need to know that the advanced UC&C capabilities are available for the solution that they buy.”

That’s why it is crucial that VoIP softswitches play nicely with other UC components. This starts with open access to the softswitch, which enables vendors to ensure that their platform is able to latch into and work with other communication services, both those on the market today and innovation to come in the future.

An example of a softswitch that meets these criteria is Aeonix, Tariran’s flagship softswitch. Aeonix is an open, user-centric UC system that consolidates disparate business applications in a single platform. It is built to run on standard Linux servers and work on industry-standard VMware virtualized platforms. It supports SIP, CSTA and web service protocols.

The system supports both built-in and third party business applications, and is fault-tolerant, has an open-architecture and is secure. It can be deployed in many configurations, including in datacenters, the cloud, or on premises, on physical or virtual servers, and in large, distributed environments that support tens of thousands of users in clustered environments.

Solutions such as Aeonix, which works with UC services today and those yet to be created, show the way when it comes to the design of flexible softswitches that bring more than just VoIP connectivity.

Because really, VoIP is just one component of modern business communication. Equally important are chat, video conferencing and other services. Any business communications solution needs to address this need for the various communications mediums to interact with each other, and this in turn requires a flexible, open approach.