Part 1 of 2: The cloud-based UC trend and its business advantages

IP telephony products have been around for over a decade. There are many options to choose from and some may be wondering, what’s next? What new features of an IP telephony endpoint can make it stand out above the rest? Yealink may have answered this question with its new T5 smart media phones.

The T5 smart media phone series includes the T56A, T58A and T58V models.

 UPDATE: Since this article was first published, Yealink has since added additional models to the T5 series: The T53 with built-in Bluetooth and dual-port Gigabit Ethernet; the T53W with built-in Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; the T54W with full-color, adjustable display; the T57W, with its 7-inch full-color capacitive adjustable touch screen; and the VP59 flagship smart video phone. Any of these can connect up to 4 cordless DECT handsets via the Yealink DD10K DECT dongle. Click here to access our review of the new models.

There are many ways the IoT can leverage, and be leveraged by, VoIP systems to create a more productive workplace.

An SD-WAN can be up to 2.5 times less expensive than traditional WAN architecture.

One of the most challenging situations for networking professionals over the years has been how to interconnect remote sites and branch offices so users at all locations can enjoy the same quality of network and telephony services in a secure and timely manner. One way to do this is to duplicate all services at each location. However, this can become administratively unwieldly, not to mention prohibitively expensive.

The solution is the use of wide area networks (WANs), where centralized services like voice and data reside at headquarters and can be provided to the remote users as if they were all physically located inside the headquarters’ LAN (local area network). In this article, we look at the different ways to deploy WAN, as well as the problems solved and business benefits to be gained by using software-defined WANs (SD-WANs).

A useful yet vastly underused functionality of SIP is what is known as presence technology. According to Salesforce, 86% of executives surveyed blamed lack of collaboration or ineffective communication for workplace failures. This is where presence can help.

When providing services for your customers, it’s all about convenience. Imagine a customer trying to find out some information about your service from your website. Her question is very specific and can’t be answered by the FAQs you have on the site. She spots a button on the bottom right of the screen that says “Can’t find what you’re looking for? Talk to a rep now!” She clicks it and is immediately connected via voice to a customer representative and gets her question answered on the spot. Now that’s service!

This is just one of the functionalities that Web Real-Time Communications (WebRTC) provides. A survey conducted by The SIP School found that 88% of professionals have either never heard of WebRTC or only have a cursory understanding of it. Here we present a few facts that will help you better understand how it can benefit your business.

It seems like everyone is talking about digital transformation these days. Technology is changing the way business is done at a mind-boggling pace, and making sure their companies are able to adapt to this change is a top priority for today’s business leaders – 81% of CEOs said keeping up with new technologies was their chief concern in a recent KPMG survey.

As a telephony dealer, you can help your customers on their digital transformation journey by intelligently leveraging their VoIP telephone system. And the good news is, it’s easier than many people think.

Last week, we touched on some of the technological advances that have allowed VoIP telephony to surpass the PSTN in both quality and reliability.

Yet, even though VoIP has been around for two decades, there are still some misconceptions about what it really is. A lot of people think of VoIP as a technology that allows placing phone calls over the internet. Although this is true, such a narrow definition encompasses only a fraction of the functionality of VoIP.

The unfortunate consequence of this misperception is that VoIP is often associated with low quality and best-effort services that offer low cost or free voice calls over the internet. Those familiar with these services have experienced the frequent disconnects, jitter and stuttering on the line characteristic of this type of service. As a result, VoIP has erroneously been associated with an unreliable user experience.

The truth is, VoIP is much more (and better) than just voice over the internet.

The most recent FCC Voice Telephone Services report, published in November 2016, states that two thirds of businesses in the United States are still using switched access telephone lines (PSTN or POTS). The reasons they haven’t yet migrated to VoIP (voice over internet protocol) are varied. One of the most prevalent myths about VoIP is that the quality is not as good or reliable as that of traditional telephone lines. The truth, however, is that VoIP technology has evolved to a point where the audio quality is generally as good if not better than analog lines.

Here we list some of the technological developments that have allowed VoIP to surpass even PSTN voice quality, some of which may surprise you!

Voice over IP networks can be challenging to implement efficiently and securely. This is in part because voice packets require specialized management and must be treated differently than normal data packets. Quality of Service (QoS), security and flow control are just some areas in which the required handling of voice traffic differs from conventional data traffic.

The good thing is that with the proper expertise and care, many of these issues can be successfully dealt with within the corporate network. Such networks are under the complete control of the network administration team and thus can be fully customized for the needs of the voice being transmitted.

However, what happens when voice packets are routed beyond the corporate network, either for voice calls to the PSTN or mobile network, or for employees who use internal voice network services remotely? Here we look at various network edge mechanisms that can be used to monitor and manage data traveling in and out of the LAN.