Recent surveys among the general crowd in the US and UK has sprung some real surprise for the sellers of latest telecommunication technologies and tools. These surveys have revealed that about a half of the population in the US don’t have any idea about VoIP or Cloud telephony. Well, this is quite a revelation considering the fact that the telecommunication companies are raving about new tools and technologies that would be extended to businesses and organizations. Now, here we have a real problem because people are oblivious of basic terminologies like VoIP and Cloud – it will be extremely challenging for any company to sell them technologies and tools like UC or Mobile VoIP.
In this article, we are going to delve into some of the terminologies that are relevant to anyone using enterprise communication tools and applications:
VoIP
This is the latest communication technology, which uses the Internet for transmitting the voice signals. It is just an extension of the IP network based telephony system wherein the local network is connected to the internet. Now if the companies choose to maintain the support services internally, the cost of recruitment, training of the employees will have to be borne by the company, and the hardware the IT employees would need, will have to be bought and maintained by the companies as well. On the other hand, if the companies use VoIP in lieu of a fixed cost, it will result in a substantial savings and help the companies make huge savings on their communications cost.
Cloud
This is a completely alien term for many users who were surveyed in the US and UK. Cloud computing is a technology that helps communication networks to get access to a pool of common servers and other configurable computing resources. All the latest communication technologies like VoIP are putting up their resources on the cloud, so that any network can virtually get connected to it at any point in time and use the network resources.
UC or Unified Communications:
Unified communication is the integration of real-time enterprise communication channels, tools and applications. This includes presence information, VoIP , instant messaging, mobility, data sharing, desktop sharing, speech recognition, call control etc. UC helps the user manage and use all forms of communication from a common platform.
BYOD or Bring Your Own Device
Almost every one of us uses smartphones, tablets and laptops at office and even for personal use. Companies are developing strategies and policies wherein employees would be able to access the enterprise communication system from their personal devices. This is being termed as Bring Your Own Device. Thus, you will be able to carry out your daily communication tasks from anywhere you want without having to worry about mobile signals or your location.
Michelle Patterson is excited with the new technologies that are threatening to change the way we stay in touch and communicate, particular in business. She works with companies that are introducing these technologies to make understanding them easy for regular people.
