Change is good. Really!

For a lot of us, change can be scary, even if the benefits outweigh the disadvantages. I recently experienced this when buying a new car. I loved my aging car even though it was having numerous problems associated with an old car with excessive miles. With no money down and a smaller monthly payment than I was paying previously, I was able to get into a brand new car that offered increased reliability and all of the latest and greatest features available on the market.

My only question was, why did I wait so long to make the switch?

Unified communications can lower costs, streamline processes, and take corporate productivity to new heights. So why aren’t you embracing it more quickly? Customers are sometimes faced with adoption obstacles such as a large capital investment, long deployment times, and limited resources that discourage them from implementing a unified communication solution.

A hosted or cloud-based unified communication solution negates these concerns and offers a more flexible and predictable solution that will enable you to be more effective and efficient. We help you develop a business case for deployment of a unified communications solution that aligns with your organizational needs by answering the following questions:

1.        Do you need to support a growing mobile and virtual workforce with features that foster collaboration and cross state communication? 

2.         Are you interested in reducing the total cost of ownership while extending communications and collaboration to the maximum number of employees?

3.         Are you looking to centralize management, streamline business processes and multiply the capabilities of a lean IT staff?

If you can answer ‘yes’ to one or all of these questions, you could be a good fit for a hosted unified communication solution from SNET, since it reduces overall costs, centralizes management, offers infinite flexibility and features, and enhances communications continuity. We encourage you to make the switch, and remind you that change can be a good thing!

The Big SIP

Right now, a lot of businesses are looking to SIP to save money by using a single IP pipe to their provider- like SNET- for voice calls and reducing or eliminating recurring network charges. But that’s really just the start. The current uptake in SIP services is an indicator of what the future holds: SIP is big.

You may have already heard of SIP. And if you haven’t, the chances are good you will very soon.

SIP is a communications protocol that is becoming extremely popular. How popular? Consider this: Infonetics (www.infonetics.com) reports that in 2011, telco companies saw their revenues from SIP-based services jump 128%. So, even if you are not yet thinking about how to use SIP in your business, the chances are good that one of your competitors is ahead of you.

Very simply, SIP—the initials stand for Session Initiation Protocol—radically simplifies communication between people, places, devices, applications and services. Just about anything that can be tagged with an IP address can be connected via SIP. It simplifies how quickly people can connect and collaborate. And it eliminates the need for a lot of phone lines and extra hardware. In fact, many S-NET customers have reported a return on investment (ROI) of 6–12 months by investing in SIP-based solutions. 

But what makes SIP so revolutionary is not simply its ability to save money. SIP changes how you think about using communications in your business.

 Here are six SIP scenarios. See if any apply to you:

You have multiple business locations. Each one must have a local phone number. But you want calls to those locations to get routed to a central service center where they can be more efficiently handled by people with the time and training. In the past, to get this kind of capability you might have had to rent 800 numbers and/or extra lines that sat unused most of the time. SIP gives you the best of both worlds: local presence and the cost efficiencies of centralization.

You have a mobile phone, several e-mail addresses, a bunch of landlines and a slew of IM contact names. You are tired of giving out all your contact information. With SIP you won’t have to: SIP establishes an “address of record”—an AOR—that provides a single, unifying identifier as your “public address.” People can reach you without having to know each of your unique device addresses or phone numbers.

You find it annoying to keep letting people know about your availability, i.e., “for the rest of the day, call me on my mobile.” Let SIP do this for you. SIP can make call-routing decisions for you by checking your calendar or seeing when you last checked your e-mail or used your mobile phone.

You are handling a conference call from your hotel room, but have to check out and want to keep the call going on your mobile. Or, you are on your mobile, but need to view a document and would like to transfer the conference call to your tablet. SIP makes all of that possible.

You operate a customer service operation using agents working from home. You want them to be able to serve customers using e-mail, instant messaging, Web chat, video, or a phone call. Rely on SIP to make it happen.

You use various programs in your business to keep track of sales, inventory, production scheduling, etc. When a problem arises, i.e., a shortage in a particular part, you would like to have a click-to-conference button on the program itself so you can quickly see who is available, initiate the call and share the application. SIP makes that possible. In fact, many applications using dynamic linked libraries (DLLs in Windows and shared libraries in Linux) are ready to be connected using SIP.

Key Trends Defining Unified Communications and how SNET Defines Communications

Key Trends Defining Unified Communications and How SNET Defines Communications!
Defining Unified Communications (UC) has always been a bit of a moving target. And that’s made many people wonder if they really need it.
In the beginning, UC often meant things like being able to see your voicemail and e-mail together on a PC.  Or having software you could put on your PC to control your phone and directory. The operative initials were as much PC as UC.
Now Unified Communications is being redefined. Mobile devices are a big part of what’s bringing about the change. Collaboration technologies are part of it. And so are improvements in the underlying communications infrastructure—IP, SIP, 4G and more.
At SNET Communications, we have just completed work on our SNET Communicator- which allows you to have a client running on whatever device you use- Droid, iPhone, Tablet or iPad- and see the status of your office phones, chat and even have a video call. Of course, you can still click to dial, have voice mail messages appear as email messages and all of the usual benefits of screen pops!
IP and SIP: The “unified” part of UC has always been primarily about getting your phone and computer to work together using the Internet-based IP and SIP protocols. This made it possible to have your PC and your phone on one network. But the bigger benefit was that a phone call itself was now able to be handled as a digital file (i.e., like an e-mail.) Just as you can easily have one e-mail go to multiple addresses, you can have calls go to multiple devices and numbers: business phone, mobile and home phone. Just as you can have dozens of people on an e-mail chain, you can have dozens of people on a conference call—without having to use a conferencing service. Just as you can easily manage different e-mail accounts, you can have multiple incoming lines for different segments of your business—a key way to create a better customer experience.  The benefits are substantial. That’s why sales of IP-based business systems grow in the double digits every year and are a driving force behind the UC revolution.
UC Apps: Everyone loves their mobile phone, in part thanks to all of the mobile apps that are now available. You can use your mobile to check the weather, do your banking, find a movie, etc. Now you can also get a UC app. SNET has one .It lets you tightly integrate you mobile phone and your office system: Manage your office directory. Set up conference calls. Make a call directly from a text. Getting the right app to marry your mobile phone to your office communications system is a major step forward for UC.
Collaboration: This is one of the hottest buzz words in business today. In fact, the terms “unified communications” and “mobile collaboration” are often used interchangeably. They are both all about bringing the right people together with the right information in the right context. “Presence” is a big part of this.  Having presence capabilities let you see at a glance who in your organization is available and how to reach them quickly.
Video: Today, anyone with an Internet-enabled device, a webcam and free software can make a video call to almost anyone else in the world. It’s estimated that more than a third of Skype-to-Skype calls now include video, with peaks as high as 50 percent during the holidays. This rapid spread of video calls in the personal, consumer market is driving the growth of video in business. Also, the SIP standard provides capabilities that simplify how video integrates and connects, opening the way to regular use of video with the same ease as voice and messaging communications. Businesses are also discovering that the smart use of video conferencing can give you new levels of flexibility in partnering, assembling teams and competing for top, full-time talent. For all of these reasons, video is becoming a larger part of the UC equation.
SNET Communications (www.snetconnect.com)  has a wide range of resources on our website that look at all aspects of UC—where it is today, and where’s it’s going.