Hosted VoIP Featured Article

British Telecom (BT (News - Alert)), a telecommunication services provider, and Cisco, a leading provider of networking systems, jointly addressed the ongoing transition to hosted collaboration, unified communications and Internet protocol (IP) telephony services, including the developing demand for IP telephony as a cloud-based service, at the recently held Gartner (News - Alert) Symposium ITxpo 2010.

The discussion revolved around the new realities, rules and opportunities that stem from a cloud computing-based collaboration and unified communications strategy, including the implications of a utility-priced service. Key speakers were Stephen Bruce, head of UCC and mobility portfolios for multinational corporations at BT Global Services (News - Alert), and Matt Rowan, manager of partner operations at Cisco.

Bruce said: "As more of our customers contemplate their end-of-life traditional telephony environments and look to embrace the cloud, they are obviously interested in the notion of moving their IP telephony applications into the cloud. The carefully planned transition to cloud-based IP telephony can help customers dramatically reduce upfront investment costs while accelerating the adoption of IP telephony and unified communications on a global scale."

Rowan said, "As businesses analyze their options related to the consumption of collaboration solutions, cloud models offer compelling value. We are seeing enormous demand for cloud based collaboration solutions. Customers are asking for a low-risk, minimally disruptive transition, and I believe BT offers a solid answer."

BT and Cisco (News - Alert) have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services. The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning helps them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach.

BT, in collaboration with Cisco, announced its hosted unified communications and IP telephony service to business customers in the U.S. in June 2010. The service allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organizations, using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies. BT can rapidly deploy services to both large and small sites, offering business customers significant savings as well as operational predictability.