There can be no question that the traditional customer premises equipment (CPE) space as we know it is under attack from the data channel. Even five years ago, VoIP was an oddity only for forwardlooking enterprises. Today, new telephony solutions based on generic hardware platforms, standard IT interfaces, the Internet and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) are displacing costly, proprietary platforms that were once the only alternative in a lucrative, closed multi-billion dollar telecoms market.
Not only are these new solutions easier to manage and upgrade, they're less expensive to deploy and maintain. They also drive productivity in very new, game-changing ways for the SMB market.
The barriers to entry that have long been the characteristic of the PBX industry are being broken down by software that operates, manages and administers your communications as easily as any other application in your network; the evolution to IT Telephony. Today, it's all about your business communications converging with your IT business processes to improve overall business productivity.
These productivity-enhancing applications like Unified Messaging, Unified Communications, conference bridges, enterprise wide presence capability, and phone-based customer service applications (Interactive Voice Response) are not necessarily new to this space. Until now, however, they have been deemed exclusive, expensive and difficult to deploy. Certainly not within the grasp of any budget conscious SMB. Enter telephony in the data center, but more importantly, telephony in your Microsoft ecosystem: IT Telephony.
IT telephony allows your business communications to enter your data center alongside other business applications like ERP and CRM and messaging servers such as Microsoft Office Communications Server and Microsoft Exchange. Business communications leverages your investment in your Microsoft ecosystem and integrates and interoperates using common administrative, identity and policy methods that are made available by Active Directory and the Windows platform. Simple deployment and support by existing IT staff or resource, and reducing training, access management and compliance support to a minimum offer a compelling TCO to any business owner.
Microsoft has announced its entrance into the telcom space with much fanfare and partnering announcements and seems poised to capture as much of the voice market as it has captured for business applications and services that run on servers and desktop workstations. So, why all the fuss?
Active Directory� is at the heart of the Windows Server ecosystem and comes included with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Server. Applications that directly integrate with Active Directory share a common interface for service discovery, application management, and management of users with other applications in the Windows Server ecosystem, and that effectively flattens business process management for IT staff.
Active Directory enables organizations to control access, secure connections, modify access rights and change access capabilities to Active Directory-enabled applications through a common interface. Staff can define policies pertaining to groups of users and computers and assign a new setting to a group as a whole, instead of physically visiting each machine. Many Independent Software Vendors (ISV's) that make accounting, finance and other business application software, already take direct advantage of the capabilities offered by Active Directory.
Doesn't it make sense that your phone system and all of its users should be resident in Active Directory? You bet it does! Applications that directly integrate with Active Directory gain all the advantages available to native members of the Windows Server ecosystem. You share common user definitions, common security attributes and take full advantage of the replication, synchronization, security and delegation which is intrinsic in Active Directory. The result is your phone system can automatically integrate and interoperate without complex integrations.
Most phone systems on the market developed with separate administration gain none of the security advantages and automation that come with Active Directory such systems have no or incomplete access to Active Directory without custom integration via directory protocols such as LDAP. The true value of Active Directory comes not from having access to an LDAP directory but from being a native part of the Windows Server ecosystem. This is best achieved by being a native Active Directory-enabled application running on the Windows platform.
Where deployment costs, complexity and business process improvement are key business drivers, the ability to automatically interoperate with other members of the Windows Server ecosystem through true Active Directory integration, should be a prime concern for SMB's purchasing or considering their next phone system purchase for any business environment.
Steve Grassie is the Vice President of Business Development and Marketing for Objectworld. For more information, visit the company online at www.objectworld.com.
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