TMCnet's Unified Communications Week in Review

As we ring out the old 2011 and ring in the new 2012, here’s wishing the New Year is full of prosperity for you, and that the Mayans were wrong.

Now let’s wrap up some unified communications news you may have missed this past week.

TMC’s (News - Alert) Madhubanti Rudra reported that Digium (News - Alert), an Asterisk Company, announced that one of its Voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems, Switchvox, experienced a 40 percent growth in 2011.

Digium is the innovative force behind Asterisk, the most widely used open source telephony software. Digium officials have attributed the success of Switchvox to the continued global adoption of its Unified Communications (News - Alert) (UC) solutions.

Switchvox has been designed for small- to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) and allows companies to connect and collaborate through integrated calling, mobility, instant messaging and conferencing, all at an affordable price. Switchvox (News - Alert) provides all the functionality and features of an enterprise class IP PBX platform at a fraction of the cost, according to company officials.

Also, TMC named Allworx, a subsidiary of Windstream Corp., as a recipient of its 2011 Unified Communications Excellence Award.

To traditional phones lines, T1/PRI, and SIP services, the Allworx 48xPhone System offers built-in connections. Allworx phone systems allow small and medium size businesses to move to VoIP at their own pace as the IP-based phone trend continues to grow. The Allworx 48x can support up to 250 users per system. Making it the perfect solution for medium sized businesses, it has two T1/PRI interfaces, the company stated.

“This award is an honor and provides further proof that our efforts to deliver innovative products that are easy to use and support are being recognized,” said Chris Hasenauer, vice president and general manager of Allworx. “The Allworx 48x System, with its many software features, including mobile link for your iPhone, advanced multi-site software, unified messaging, and tapi driver, delivers unified communications to businesses nationwide.”

And TMC’s Carrie Schmelkin noted that nearly 3 million enterprise users now rely on Microsoft (News - Alert) Lync. Existing Microsoft purchasing arrangements are used by many organizations to access Lync licenses. This rapid adoption of Lync has therefore become a strong propellant for UC growth.

Some adjustments are required for support teams to be UC-ready. Apart from learning each other’s language, IT staff must be prepared to carry out some skill sharing. When a business with no existing experience with the requirements for achieving high fidelity deploys enterprise voice, voice traffic may not receive the required priority. As the network architects are unaware of the current voice calling patterns during the early stages of VoIP deployment, network links can become congested.

As problems are experienced in the telephony domain, the venture into VoIP may then be considered a failure. The actual causes might however be underlying network factors, bandwidth or incorrect QoS settings, or missing VoIP configuration. The transition from silos of server, application and telephony expertise to real-time unified communications management must therefore be accelerated for everyone’s advantage.