Resource Center

Convergence

Key Factors in Convergence

As with all emerging technologies, new philosophies and terminology come into common usage before many people have a chance to learn precisely what's involved or how to distinguish between similar concepts. So let's take a look at what "converged communications" really means for business.

Unified Communications vs. Converged Communications

Unified Communications and converged communications are related, but not the same thing. One definition of Unified Communications refers to the delivery and management by an application or applications of integrated messages of every type (voice, fax, email, images and video) to a single in-box. The more advanced notion of Unified Communication is well represented by Forrester as "the combination of presence with voice, video, email, and instant messaging - streamlines companies' businesses by making it easier to contact employees, customers, and suppliers through the most appropriate path for the task" and even expands that notion outside of an organization's premise to cover all wireless and fixed carrier networks. In contrast, "converged communications" relates to the network, not the applications, and stands for the integration of voice, video and data onto a single network.

VoIP Monitoring and Quality of Service

When business organizations do bring both Unified Communications and converged communications into the mainstream, call quality concerns will-and should-lead to Quality of Service standards for voice. As Network World's Susan Breidenbach noted, "Despite increasing reliance on e-mail, voice remains executives' method of choice for closing deals, and businesses embracing VoIP can't afford to make assumptions about call quality."1

From Network Traffic Analysis to a Unified View for Converged Network Management

Many expert tools exist to help individually with telecom and voice network management, VoIP monitoring, and network traffic analysis. Communicado™'s own VXTracker™ is a widely used solution for total voice communications management. And of even more importance in the age of convergence is our new Streamline™ Service Management Platform, which provides a unified view for managing the converged network-voice and data together-and is focused on helping business provide Guaranteed Service Levels of real-time, person-to-person communications.

Go Deeper:

1 "New tools quantify VoIP call quality", Susan Breidenbach, Network World, 03/28/05.