THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

Greg Hatfield
Head, Voice Over Internet Solutions Business Unit: IS

Looking back on the concept of converged communications, which is increasingly becoming a viable service in the corporate world, it can quite accurately be said that it all had its start in something surprisingly simple: Voice. When it was discovered that voice could be transmitted on the networks formerly reserved for data traffic, it soon became the impetus for an expanded communication horizon.

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a fundamental foundation of converged communications. VoIP underpins converged communication because at its heart, it represents infrastructure rationalisation. That simply means putting two previously distinct networks into one. Not very glamorous, but it is from this pretty simple notion that all the benefits flow. With these networks combined, the various modes of communication are also brought together. The immediate benefit of cost reduction from managing a single infrastructure now suddenly has quite a few extended concepts attached to it, such as business optimisation, the improvement of individual productivity and an increase in convenience.

Converged communication has happened rather quickly – just a few years ago, VoIP was just a little ahead of the sharpest razor on the cutting edge. VoIP today is commonplace. We sell millions of minutes every month; there is enough momentum that any concerns about the reliability or efficacy of VoIP have been put to bed. However, while VoIP is no doubt a handy bit of business for IS, voice lays the foundation that leads to so much more. Selling a cheap minute only gets you so far. It might be a great value-add right now, but increased competition means it is going to become such a commoditised offering that a sustainable business into the future can hardly be assured.

That’s where converged communications comes into the play. Converged communications is about adding a lot more value around voice. For starters, the traditional PBX is begging to be virtualised; with VoIP, this piece of hardware is replaced with an IP PBX, effectively a piece of software which sits in a secure remote data centre and is offered to the client as a service.

‘Traditional’ telephone networks don’t lend themselves to this model. IP-based networks do. Dial tone powered by IP becomes an endpoint through which any one of a number of services can be offered. These services are diverse, covering all of those typical to a telecommunications operator, such as teleconferencing and voicemail, as well as many that are unique to a converged carrier. Into this category go services such as the softphone (a software extension of the corporate telephone system onto a PC), caller name presentation, simultaneous ringing, malicious call trace, voicemail to email (Visual Voicemail) and unified messaging.

Then there are ‘information technology’ type services, which includes those like email, productivity applications, data storage capacity, backup and restore. More or less any service that businesses currently use on PCs or on servers in their in house infrastructure can be delivered via this end point.

Be that as it may, in the economic downturn, convergence has lost its lustre just a little bit. Sure, most clients are just looking for a lowcost dial tone. We are of course very happy to provide just that; it serves as the ideal start point for a world of additional services, which in any combination suits the needs of the individual business and becomes its own unique converged communications solution.