No matter what your business does, voice communication is a critical element of success. Your employees need a secure way to communicate with customers, contact prospective clients and conduct business. It makes sense for businesses to ditch the legacy telephony system and invest in a solid, stable and cost-effective phone system that uses the most cutting edge technologies available.

Of course, to use these technologies properly, it behooves companies to invest in the right hardware, namely in the form of IP phones. IT pros have the necessary hardware on their minds, at least according to survey results.

TechTarget released its findings from a survey, which demonstrates how IT pros are spending their money; VoIP phones were at the top of the list.  More than 80 percent, in fact, intended to purchase IP phones within the next 12 months.

IP phones are moving in a big way to integrate all of the features that a cloud-based system has to offer. Users can use their Web cameras to see the other person over the computer monitor and talk to them over an IP phone simultaneously or use special purpose video phones to see and talk over the large screen available over the IP video phone itself.

Business IP phones are designed with ergonomics and plenty of features, giving users easy, intuitive access to the feature rich telephony and advanced desktop applications enabled by an IP system.

From low cost to portability and feature-rich solutions, a business’ reputation relies on not good, but excellent communications. IP phones come with features like call forwarding, call waiting, voicemail, caller ID and three-way calling, so selecting the right IP phone is a key step to using IP telephony to its fullest potential.