It is probably sensible to wait until a couple weeks of 2012 have gone by to offer predictions as to what the year will hold as one gets a better sense of the industry that way.
In that spirit, Tone Software’s (News - Alert) Amit Kapoor, director of strategic technology at Tone Software, recently shared in a blog post that “it appears that 2012 is starting in a cautiously more optimistic note compared to 2011,” adding that the proliferation of unified communications, videoconference, telepresence, cloud and managed services within the enterprise domain “sets up 2012 for continuous growth through quantifiable ROIs and expansion towards the SMB space.”
Which would be great if it holds true. Let’s hope it does.
The post from the voice management company takes the opportunity to “review the potential technology evolutions that can impact enterprise communications,” with Kapoor saying “in my opinion it’s evident that both mobile and video will continue to define the major changes to the enterprise.”
No doubt he’ll find many to concur on that, but he breaks it down into specific areas:
Videoconference and Telepresence (News - Alert). Kapoor foresees videoconferencing technologies being made available to all levels of executives and the SMB space instead of it remaining as an out-of-reach capability for these groups. In 2012, Kapoor feels that these groups will finally realize tangible ROI in terms of productivity. He sees large enterprises embracing videoconferencing and telepresence due to what they’ll find to be similarly positive returns on such investments, which will lead to adoption of video to contact center tools on customer touch points.
Unified Communications (News - Alert). If you want “more cost-effective UC available for the SMB markets” then Kapoor thinks 2012 will be a good year for you. He does note that vendors, particularly, need to make a stronger case for ROI when selling to this market, specifically showing how SMBs looking for positive change will benefit in measurable ways from the investment.
Cloud. We can all recognize 2011 as the year of the cloud, when it really came into its own as a viable option. Kapoor sees the challenge now being the ability of cloud providers “to ensure sufficient bandwidth and quality.” Indeed – that will be the challenge for a few other industry sectors as well. Yet Kapoor’s confident that “We will see more applications that are also optimized for cloud-based delivery.”
Mobile. Rumors of Microsoft (News - Alert) creating an iOS-based Office Application “will leap the iPad into a more effective producing device that will exasperate the IT dilemma,” Kapoor writes. He also believes the IT organization will need to come to grips with how employees use iOS devices within the company’s network.
Session Based Communications. Wrapping up, Kapoor expresses his hope that 2012 will be “the year of more session-based applications for real time communications,” giving us all more options for session based interactions between devices.
In other company news, recently Tone Software sat down with TMCnet to disucss how the company faredi n 2011 and what can we expect from it in 2012. Tone Software boasts a variety of IT and telecommunications management solutions including its flagship product line, ReliaTel. ReliaTel is capable of managing a company’s entire voice environment across VoIP, PBX (News - Alert), IP Telephony, and IT networks to ensure reliable, quality voice communications are always available.
“2011 was a progressive year for Tone’s ReliaTel VoIP Quality and Converged Service Level Management solution,” Tracey Whitney, director of marketing for Tone Software, told TMCnet.
One of the biggest areas of development for Tone Software was the introduction of its SIP management capabilities that provide end-to-end visibility and control over the quality and performance of SIP-based trunks in converged VoIP environments.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. For more information on registering for ITEXPO registration click here.
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David Sims is a contributing editor for TMCnet. To read more of David’s articles, please visit his columnist page. He also blogs for TMCnet here.Edited by Carrie Schmelkin