Get Ready For VoIP

If you haven't taken a serious look at VoIP for your network, it's high time you did. Yes, I know that early VoIP iterations were marked by poor voice quality, network management problems, and QOS issues. But to a great extent, those problems have been resolved.

VoIP has many benefits for enterprises, including reduced telecommunications costs, being able to manage a single unified networks instead of separate ones for voice and data, creating merged IP-voice applications in call centersthe list is long and growing longer every day.

Consumers are flocking to the technology, and enterprises are slowly heading there as well. So service providers and hardware and software vendors are releasing a slew of VoIP products and services.

Cisco, for example, recently completed the purchase of Dynamicsoft, a pioneer in Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based solutions that allow telecommunications service providers to deliver advanced Internet Protocol (IP) voice, data, and multimedia services.

There's a lot more as well. So if you haven't made the move to VoIP yet, now's the time. As far as the eye can see, there are new products and services, and they're finally real.