By Colleen Schmidt, Director of Partner Success, CoreDial

Risk is something that we fear because it requires us to put ourselves out there to achieve something greater. There is always a chance you could lose something important to you, especially if you take a risk on a venture or idea you know little about or have not adequately prepared for. The same is true when it comes to taking risks for your business. As much as we would like to mitigate business risks, the fact is they are an integral part of the growth process for any business. Just ask these business risk takers: Ben Silbermann, the creator of Pinterest, risked everything by leaving a job at Google to create the virtual pinboard site. Ben would survive early disappointments and now presides over a company worth $1 billion. Or Drew Houston of DropBox, who held to his guns when Apple Founder Steve Jobs told him to join Apple or be taken over in the market and now enjoys running a $1 billion company.

For VARs, MSPs and other resellers, your risks may not be the same as the ones mentioned above, but embracing the trends in the industry is the key to long-term success. For the unified communications (UC) industry, taking a risk on hosted and cloud-based services, as well as having a technology partner you can trust, will ensure your business stays economically solvent over time and is ready to meet the changing needs of your customers. Ignoring the shifting tides in the industry will lessen the options you can bring to the table for your customers, which will eventually impact your bottom line.

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.

As one of the biggest expenses of any business, telecommunications solutions should be both reliable and cost-effective. One telephony network design aspect that can provide both is the direct connection of the IP phone system to a mobile network.

Here we explore two ways to do this, either of which not only achieves cost savings for the company but also enhances reliability by providing an additional redundant and overflow route.

By Nathan Miloszewski, on behalf of Yeastar

When it comes to VoIP PBX systems, channel partners need to determine whether an on-premise solution or a cloud-based service is best suited for their customer.

Each solution has its strengths. For the instances in which you determine that an onsite IP PBX is the best option for your customer, we’ve put together these guidelines to help you sell against the hosted solutions offered by your competitors. Here at Yeastar, we work with thousands of channel partners who find themselves in competition with cloud-based VoIP service providers and have identified the most compelling arguments for an on-premise solution. Think of each one as an additional arrow in your sales quiver.

By Stefan Eriksson, Marketing and Communications Manager of Konftel

Remote meetings with poor quality audio are often exhausting. Misunderstandings become more likely because it’s difficult to hear nuances and other subtleties in conversation. So you want to aim for the best sound quality possible during teleconferences. The following is a quick explanation of different technical requirements for audio quality.

• A purely mobile solution gives you great flexibility and mobility, but sometimes at the expense of sound quality. Many mobile operators now offer HD Voice in their networks, which delivers HD audio if the phone supports the technology.
• Traditional analog telephony delivers an acceptable sound quality, but with limitations in frequency range. Sometimes known as telephone quality or narrowband.
• VoIP, i.e., digital telephony via the data network (voice over IP), allows for extended frequency range, but with some compression. IP makes it possible to achieve superior audio quality, also called HD audio or wideband.
• Remember that all local networks and accessories, e.g. Wi-Fi, DECT (wireless telephony) or Bluetooth^®, affect the transmission capacity and can have an adverse impact on the sound quality.
• All of Konftel’s phones and conference units offer HD audio in contexts where PBXs and networks support it.

Replacing a legacy PBX that a company has used for years with an IP PBX can be intimidating, and understandably so. That’s why we recommend a transition method that allows the new technology to be gradually introduced over time. This not only ensures business continuity but also gives the associates plenty of time to adjust to the new equipment.

Businesses are constantly trying to boost productivity so they can do more – and grow more – with less. SIP telephony is a great example of this. Compared with legacy PBX-based phone systems, IP phone systems allow companies to do much more, with less hardware and fewer resources.

Ensuring business continuity in case of unexpected service loss is an essential component of any IP telephone system. In a previous blog post we mentioned various failover mechanisms that can be deployed to address different scenarios. Here, we’ll take a closer look at two in particular: backup SIP trunk or ITSP, and failover servers. You may be surprised to discover how easy and affordable they are to set up – especially when compared with the costly alternative of service interruption.

Open source with open access vs. open source:
Make sure you know which one suits you and your customer. 

Open source telecommunications systems are not all created equal. All are open source in the sense that they are built using publicly and freely available code like Asterisk. However, not all of them allow access to the root programming level, which allows you to modify or customize aspects of the code to suit specific requirements or preferences. If a system restricts root-level access, certain features may be customizable, but don’t count on having much leeway. Be sure you know which one best suits your customer.

These features absolutely must be in your IP PBX suite offering

When proposing IP voice solutions to small businesses, certain applications and features are so essential that the customer won’t even consider purchasing a system without them. According to a study of more than 200 small businesses conducted by SoftwareAdvice, the phone system applications most often cited as “required” are: