theartofservice

The Information Age should be renamed the Communication Age. At no time in our history has our society ever been inundated with communication devices and methods and simple ways of staying in touch. Our neighbors are no longer across the hall, but may be a person halfway around the world.

With the opportunities, however, comes a curse. The devices and tools and software required to stay in touch can become overwhelming with cellphones, blackberrys, instant messaging, email, voice mail, web conferencing, Internet chats, and the like. Recently though, a new technology has been gaining wide attention – Voice Over IP or VoIP.

Initially adopted the business to cut rising telecommunication cost, VoIP has become a vital component for unified communication. That is, having email read through the voicemail system or having voicemail readable through an email. The purpose of unified communication is to merge collaboration tools such as calendaring, email, instant messaging with voice technology.

The greatest benefit of VoIP goes to the gains in mobile computing, where from a single device, a person can access their phone, the Internet, email, and almost anything that can be imagined from a simple handheld.

For enterprises, there is one potential pitfall. Traditionally, the IT departments for services unified VoIP were separated and still are. With VoIP, the collaboration between these different departments has become a high priority for the success of the implementation and during operations. This requires the integration to extend to business processes, not just applications. If everyone is not on board with VoIP, than the entire system can fail.