Ten Ways The Cloud Will Reshape Voice

There is considerable discussion about the oncoming impacts of cloud computing and how it will reshape (or eliminate) the enterprise data center. But until recently, there has been relatively little discussion about how cloud technologies will impact telecommunications, or specifically enterprise voice.

There is no question that the emerging technologies will reshape voice significantly. But exactly how is still unclear; the technologies are young and overlapping. The term "the cloud" is used to represent many technologies and models ranging from simple outsourced services to virtual on-demand distributed services. The cloud changes everything, and nothing. Solid voice engineeringbecomes more critical than ever, proper dial plan design, disasterrecovery planning, network engineering, auto attendant design, callcenter techniques, etc. remain valuable and important. The chain linkstrength theory applies, and the cloud via distributed systems can makea very long chain.

Load a phone system on a virtual server in the cloud, integrate it with multiple APIs and PSTN phones. Create new powerful XML applications that utilize the browser and integrate API calls directly into desktop computer applications. The only thing clear is that voice systems will look very different than the big-iron PBX of the past.

Voice systems are no longer an island. It isn't "if" enterprise voice will use the cloud, but more appropriately "when" or "how". Enterprise voice is about to enter a period of extreme innovation--more so than ever.

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