TONE Software

Press Releases

Management-as-a-Service

• Unified Communications
• UCMS

Unified Communications > IP Telephony > VoIP...

Mobile, IP telephony, instant messaging, conferencing and video are integrated with other applications such as email and calendaring for one-click escalation and are frequently integrated with other business applications for accelerated workflows. Although useful in their own right, it is the integration of the communications services that brings the lower cost and higher productivity. Users can get decisions made faster since they know which service is the most likely to reach the person they need to communicate with. 

Regardless of the benefits delivered to endusers one thing is very clear. For the IT department, unified communications is a fundamentally different architecture and technology than the classic TDM voice environment. To exceed users expectations, unified communications needs a fundamentally different approach to operations, management and ongoing support.

Here are a few ways that unified communications changes things:

• At the network level, classic TDM telephony systems had a unique network dedicated to deliver real-time voice services. Yet for unified communications, it is a converged voice and data network, so voice and data applications rely on the same network and the IT department needs access to new skills to control and support that reality.
• In terms of geographic limitations, the unified communications relies on IP so it is far easily supportive of remote offices and home workers. IT departments and their service suppliers need to assure quality real-time services remotely without regard to geography or travel.
• And to compound the challenge, the predictable real-time traffic environment is now mixed with the unpredictable bursty computing application traffic, so the old techniques to engineer, manage and support these applications are obsolete.

... But Users' Expectations Haven't Changed.

In original research by Brockmann & Company, 85% of business users surveyed reported that the quality of voice communications is very important to the success of their business. Yet 45% experience voice quality defects at least once a month. Sadly, users are being subjected to poor quality communications and it affects their customer relationships too. 61% reported that their perceptions of suppliers’ brands decline when they experience voice quality defects.

That’s why businesses and service providers need a new approach to managing infrastructure for unified communications. The opportunity for VARs is to provide not just the expertise to assure a quality foundation for unified communications, but to provide the expertise as a service to make it easy for customer consumption. Quality communications services are worth more.

Unified Communications brings disparate realtime business communications together.

Business users experience range of quality problems in voice communications.