Where will Telephony Be in Two Years?
VoIP- News.com
There are two clear trends that will continue to shape business telephony in the next two years: IP-based communications and mobility.
Voice over IP technology will continue to evolve until telephony becomes part of the data center, rather than a stand-alone solution in business. New IP-based voice systems , such as Avaya Aura, Cisco Unified Communications Manager, and Microsoft Lync, are designed to be installed in the data center and perform functions beyond connecting phone calls.
Adopting IP-based telephony systems also enables a greater degree of mobility for business communications. Calls – and other IP-based communications- can be more easily transferred between handsets and other mobile devices than with an analog phone system. And users with smartphones and soft client-enabled tablets require more mobile telephony features to stay productive.
Analyst Michael Dortch, principal at DortchOnIT.com believes that businesses will soon begin to purchase their telephony services through fixed price packages that are based on services, service-level agreements (SLAs) and number of users. Future business telephony packages are likely to mirror today’s individual mobile service plans with unlimited calling and texting. As advanced communications functions become commoditized, these packages will also routinely include unified messaging and unified communications features. “Telephony will be a data networking thing, not a voice networking thing. It will be just another bitstream.”