NEC: Serving Up Innovation for the SMB

In an increasingly competitive business climate, organizations of all sizes continue to look to innovative technologies to solve fundamental business problems while slashing costs. The growing adoption of VoIP technology and the applications it supports has provided organizations with the solutions needed to improve corporate efficiency while lowering operating costs. This scenario is certainly the case when looking at enterprises that employ thousands of people. However, large corporations are not the only companies that are deploying VoIP technology.

In an age when small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are looking to gain market share while expanding their national and global reach, VoIP solution sets provide an appealing answer to many of the unique challenges facing these organizations. Recent studies suggest that the adoption level of VoIP technologies among SMBs continues to surge with an even greater percentage currently evaluating the benefits and solutions on the market.

After the successful launch of NEC's Electra Elite IPK II, a versatile communication platform supporting both traditional voice and IP on a single processor for the SMB, the company has seen a sharp increase in businesses that are looking to gain an understanding of the communications choices available to them. Yet, organizations are looking for more than just a cost-saving instrument that allows them to make phone calls. When deploying a new communications solution, businesses are purchasing a full array of tailored applications, hardware components, and services that ensure the solution will expand as the organization grows. Productivity enhancing tools such as NEC's Unified Messaging and SoftPhones give SMBs the ability to conduct everyday tasks more efficiently while at the office or on the go. In addition to a wide array of applications, businesses of all sizes are increasingly relying upon specialized services to ensure the survivability of their communication system, the lifeline of any organization.



Applications and services continue to be hot-button solutions that existing and new customers are evaluating. However, new business objectives and needs have prompted prospective and existing customers to investigate new ways that an organization's communication system can expand as their business grows. In response to their customers' growing demands, SMBs have increasingly opened new offices around the globe to provide more localized support. With new offices come increasing communication complexities and demands.

In response to customer demand and an increase in SMB interest in VoIP technologies, NEC's IPK II telephony solution was developed to provide the needed flexibility to tackle the most complex organizational needs.

The IPK II provides a unique set of advantages to those businesses seeking an advanced information system that is both flexible and dependable. With the ability to serve as a stand-alone IP telephony node, and scale from four-456 ports, IPK II allows for future growth as business requirements change. With the SMB in mind, NEC developed the IPK II to work with an organization's existing hardware and application infrastructure in order to provide remote users with the same features available to those in the home office location. Additionally, remote users may use an organization's communication solutions, such as softphones, Call Center applications, and other tools, to ensure that standard business procedures are not only completed, but are done so more efficiently. IPK II's feature-rich HTML-based function allows for easy adds, moves, and changes within the solution, meaning your staff can make adjustments to the system as needed without having to call a technician, which increases efficiencies and lowers the total cost of ownership.

As SMBs evaluate VoIP technologies and the value they provide, NEC will continue to provide innovative solutions, like the IPK II, that not only prove to lower operating costs associated with phone charges, but also increase organizational efficiencies between home and remote office locations. NEC's commitment to innovation continues to provide growing organizations with the tailored solutions they need in order to remain competitive in today's business climate. IT

Gail Fisher is product manager, SMB solutions, at NEC (news - alerts).