Why Business Needs Unified Communications

By: John Shepler

Time was when there was only one method of electronic communication. It was that heavy black phone on your desk. Now look what we have. Sure, there’s still a black phone on your desk, but it’s a lot lighter thanks to modern plastics and solid state electronics. There’s also a raft of other ways we communicate electronically. How many of these do you use: email, text messages, mobile phone calls and video chats? How about the platforms: desktop computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones and soon… a watch?

One of the biggest communications issues, especially in business, is that all these different platforms and applications don’t necessarily play together well. One solution is to just make sure you have them all with you. That used to mean a pager on the belt, a cell phone in the pocket, a laptop in the briefcase, and somebody to forward you messages from your office when you were in the field. A better solution soon became a crying need.

Let’s Combine Everything into One
The answer that you might expect is to integrate all of these communications systems into one. That won’t really do. There is no one platform that can handle everything equally well. The desk phone is tethered, as is the desktop computer with the nice big screen. The smartphone screen is way too small for a lot of serious work. The tablet makes a ridiculous telephone held up to your ear.

There are forces still pulling in that direction. Enter the “phablet.” It’s a giant cell phone that’s almost, if not really, too big for your pocket. Tablet computers now have clip on keyboards so you can touch type from the coffee house. Laptop computers are shrinking, getting lighter and some have screens that detach from the keyboard and act like tablets. If there was only a way to get a great big screen that you can actually see along with keys that fit your fingers along with a telephone that lets you take calls privately, handles email and text messaging, and all fits neatly in your shirt pocket.

Well, there isn’t. There isn’t even anything on the horizon that fits this description. Someday, the QWERTY typewriter keyboard may become as quaint as the crank telephone. Siri might actually become your best friend and be able to read your mind as well as understand everything you’re mumbling. Something akin to Google Glass may project that big screen in front of your face anywhere. That’s not today, though. Today we need a solution that let’s us communicate anyway we like anywhere we happen to be.

It’s Called Unified Communications
The development that takes what we have and makes it into the closest approximation of what we really want is UC or Unified Communications. The “unified” part means doesn’t mean trying to get one platform to do everything. It recognizes that each device has its strong points and weaknesses. The master solution is to make all of this stuff play together well. In fact, so well that you needn’t be afraid that you are missing out just because you don’t have a particular platform with you at the moment.

A simple example is the lowly telephone call. Every business is still dependent on the telephone simply because it is the only universal medium of voice communications. For a long time, this meant having a business number that you printed on your business cards and a separate home phone number that was printed in “the book.” If you were at home you didn’t get your business calls unless you had a secretary working late to give the caller your home number or forward the call. You came in the next morning and found a raft of pink “while you were out” call sheets on the your desk.

The introduction of the cell phone only made matters worse. Now you’ve got a third phone number that only certain people know. What if they call the office instead of your cell when you are out? Will you miss the sale? Could be.

Unified communications starts with voice mail to replace the secretary and the telephone message sheets. You don’t have to fear missing a call because they’ll leave a voice message you can pick up anywhere. Even better is a “find me follow me” service that routes your calls to wherever you happen to be. With this type of automation you can hand out a single phone number and have it try your office phone, your cell phone or go to voice mail. You can even have it send you an email with the audio file of the call. Toll free number? Just have it routed to your unified business number.

The Technology Behind UC
The most popular platform for implementing unified communications is the cloud. Why? Because the cloud provides a common place to collect and distribute everything with near-infinite resources. All that processing power can easily handle everything from an independent professional up to the largest corporation. You don’t need to make a big capital investment or try to keep up to date on installing the newest features. The cloud provider takes care of that.

Cloud UC is driven by computing power and that computing power understands IP or Internet Protocol. The “Internet” part of IP doesn’t necessarily mean the public Internet. It just means the technical protocol that is also used by the Internet. For security and highest voice quality, you may not want your internal communications on the Internet at all. You will, however, want access to the Internet both in the office and on the road. That can be done carefully so that you use the Internet when you want to but private channels when you don’t.

What UC Can Do For You
Unified communications can be a gateway to both productivity improvement and cost reduction. It augments or replaces your in-house PBX phone system with a more powerful VoIP system that uses a common network with your computers and other digital devices. You can get tools for ease of collaboration among employees as well as the obvious single phone number benefits. Your laptop becomes your desktop with remote desktop access. Voice and video conferences can take place anywhere with a diverse group scattered in offices and hotel rooms around the globe.

Will all this cost a fortune? It’s probably cheaper than you think and may even offer all the new benefits at a lower cost than you are paying now. There’s only one way to find out. Get a set of competitive quotes for unified communications solutions and review the benefits and costs specific to your situation.



Note: The humorous mousepad about unified communications, along with many other items in the same theme, is available from the Gigapacket Zazzle store.

Cloud Based Unified Communications

Servers in the cloud are now commonly accepted. Many IT organizations are finding it makes more sense to have nearly instant access to nearly unlimited processing and storage than be constantly trying to figure out how much hardware to order for next year. You have a problem either way. Guess too low and you run out of capacity when unexpected business comes your way. Guess too high and you are saddled with expensive resources that sit there idle, using power but not doing much else. It’s a good thing that you don’t have these problems with the phone system. Or do you?

In a way, your PBX switching system can be thought of as just another server. Chances are that it is a proprietary design that only the vendor supports. It’s also deals with IO (Input/Output) that is unique to the telephone industry. Just how scalable is this system? Probably not much. You start out ordering as much capacity as you can anticipate and most of it sits idle awaiting the business to grow into in. At some point you run out of capacity and no more phones or lines can be connected. For awhile, you can work around these limitations by ordering additional interface boards. Then the whole design goes obsolete and you start all over.

How would you like to get rid of this headache and greatly expand your voice communications options? As you might suspect, the answer is in the cloud. With cloud based communications, all switching and message storage is done on cloud based servers. You simply need a user access device known as a SIP telephone or IP Phone. These devices piggyback on your data network can connect to the cloud using a specialized WAN connection called a SIP Trunk. Out goes all that phone wiring as well as the old clunker PBX and the expense of maintaining it and periodically buying a newer model. The cloud keeps all the hardware and software up to date.

Need more capacity? Just bring it online the way you order up more cloud servers. In this case, the capacity is measured in terms of “seats.” One seat is one telephone. You need more phones? Order additional seats as required. You pay for these per seat per month. Many times the price you pay is a fixed amount that includes your domestic local and long distance calling plus a plethora of features.

Speaking of features, cloud based PBX or hosted PBX systems can do tricks that your old in-house PBX hardware can’t. For instance, much of today’s business communication is done on smartphones. PBX equipment doesn’t know what to do with a smartphone. There’s no wire to plug it into a port on the machine. So, what you wind up with is a stand-alone office phone and a separate smartphone with its own features on its own network. If you spend a lot of time in the field, you’ll need to call into your desk phone voice mail from time to time just to see if there are any important messages. Well, at least when you’re in the office you can have both your desk phone and smart phone at hand.

Wouldn’t you rather have one number for clients to call and let the system sort out where to send it? That’s the idea behind unified communications. Instead of having all sorts of different ways that you communicate, each with their own device and connectivity, you integrate everything into one system that can handle it all. This can include traditional landline telephones plus wireless smartphones, but it can also include video conferencing, text messaging, email and FAX. What all of these have in common is that they are all network communications that are integrated on your own network. The SIP trunk connects your network to your provider’s network and vast cloud resources.

One provider, the global communications company Masergy, has expanded the role of cloud based unified communications to include CRM system integration, call accounting, call recording, automated attendants, hunt groups and call center features. Your access is by telephone, video phone, desktop computer, mobile device, laptop computer and business systems. They’re all connected to the cloud, making it possible to connect across diverse platforms. It doesn’t matter where you are or what you are doing. You always have access to the same calling features and applications.

Have you just about reached the end of the “line” with your old in-house PBX phone system? Before you invest a fortune in a newer model and perpetuate the same old frustrations, consider a move to cloud based unified communications. You’ll probably find that you can get more productivity at less cost by switching to the latest cloud communications services.

Smoothstone Offers Awareness In the Cloud

The notion of the business telephone as the big black clunky thing that sits on your desk and tethers you with a curly cord is fast fading into history. Today’s business communications is often mobile and multidimensional, including chatting, instant messaging, file transfers, Web based applications and collaboration as well as conferencing. Is the venerable corporate PBX system still up to the task?

When the old phone system becomes a limitation to productivity, many companies now look to the clouds for answers. A major innovator in moving business communications to the cloud is Smoothstone IP Communications. Their VoiceMaxx cloud-based PBX platform goes beyond fixed mobile convergence to unify all types of communication, including text and voice. Now they’re making that system cloud aware.

The Smoothstone Awareness, Messaging and Presence (AMP) ties co-workers together through a cloud-based communications platform that knows the status of everyone in the system. No more guessing if one of your team members is available or not. Remember phone tag? That’s yesterday’s problem. AMP will instantly show you if someone is “free to chat”, “online” or “away.” It also knows if you are “on the phone” or have set your status to “do not disturb.”

Sounds a little like some of the instant messaging and social networking tools that you are already familiar with, doesn’t it? The problem with the popular public apps is that they were designed for the public and don’t contain the rigorous controls needed for corporate security and governance. Smoothstone establishes a private version of these popular apps within the VoiceMaxx cloud. AMP has the directory integration, encryption, chat logging and virus protection you need for corporate-wide deployment.

Consider today’s smartphone. It’s as much a mobile computing terminal as a telephone. If all you are concerned about is that you can call back to the office and get your voicemail messages, you are missing out on a lot of the productivity advantage of this tool. The ideal situation is that you have an integrated voice and data environment and that it stays with you no matter where you go.

Up until recently, the best that can be achieved is to carry both a cell phone and a laptop (now notebook or netbook) computer. That way you had access to both your computing environment and your business phone. BlackBerry was first to integrate voice and messaging into one device. Now iPhone and Android have taken over this function with much more emphasis on applications, especially cloud applications, as a way to integrate mobile and fixed office tools.

We’re crossing a threshold now, from a collection of ad-hoc solutions to a truly seamless system that incorporates everything you need into one unified system. The advantage is that all these things work together by design rather than by kludge and workaround. It’s natural that the integrated environment be powered from the cloud, since we rarely stay in one spot for long. Smoothstone’s VoiceMaxx is a big step forward in that direction and a look at how we’ll communicate in the future.

Have you outgrown your once adequate but now primitive PBX telephone system? Before rushing out and spending a small fortune to upgrade to a bigger and better box, take a close look at cloud communication solutions to see if they are a better fit and lower cost option.

Cloud Communications Advantages Explained

Many companies are scratching their heads, wondering if it makes sense to move their communications to the cloud. XO Communications, a major competitive networking and telecom services provider, has a quick explanation of just why moving to the cloud makes sense. Take a minute and a half and see if this looks like something you should be doing...



XO’s Enterprise Cloud Communications does for multi-location businesses what basic hosted PBX services do for the SMB. It gets the organization out of the business of owning and managing a telephone system and into the role of a service user, albeit a sophisticated one.

By moving to a cloud hosted PBX and connecting via the extensive XO network from each location, you gain advanced features while keeping your calls “on net” to avoid telco toll charges. In addition to the usual local and long distance calling with standard business phone features, you gain high definition voice and video enterprise-wide and the ability to move calls seamlessly from your mobile phone to a fixed phone. Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC) lets you make and receive calls from any device at any location with only one phone number, dial plan and voice mailbox.

Regardless of how many regional and branch offices you have and where they are, you may be able to integrate your entire operation in the XO cloud and avoid the headaches of capital investment, ongoing maintenance, full time staffing and periodic upgrades. All of that responsibility moves to the provider and you have peace of mind of knowing what it’s going to cost per employee per month.

Does cloud communications sound like it might be the right next move for your company? If so, get complete features, pricing and consultation for cloud networking services now. There are advantages for all size companies from small offices on up to the largest corporations.

Fixed Mobile Convergence Includes Android and iPhone

When we think of network convergence, it is generally in terms of engineering the LAN, MAN and WAN to support voice, video and data. Network convergence is at the heart of the productivity and cost savings offered by enterprise VoIP solutions. Even so, there is still one piece missing. That’s the mobile phone. This is where FMC or Fixed Mobile Convergence comes into play.

The idea behind FMC is that cell phones, especially smartphones, are now so ubiquitous that they have to be included in the corporate communications structure or there will be a big hole in the system. It’s especially true for sales people, field engineers, and anyone else who spends a significant amount of time out of the office and away from the desk phone. It’s also true, perhaps unfortunately, that we’re in a 24/7 world where important calls may come in at any time.

Some employees handle this situation with workarounds, such as setting up the office phone to forward to their cell phone when they leave the office. That’s fine when they remember. If not, voice mail becomes the communications method of last resort. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have the office phone system extended to include your mobile phone?

Smoothstone IP Communications thinks so and is now making their Mobile Connect app available to both Android and iPhone using customers. What Mobile Connect does integrate your smartphone into the enterprise communications platform. You then have one number, your work number, that rings on both your desk phone and your cell phone. When you place an outgoing call, the Caller ID reflects your work number, not your personal mobile number. Other calling features include access to the company directory, low cost international calling, 4-digit on-net dialing, visual voice mail and one-touch access to listen to and manipulate voice mail messages.

There are also advanced features from Smoothstone’s VoiceMAXX system that carry over to Mobile Connect. These include call recording and centralized call detail reporting.

VoiceMAXX is Smoothstone’s cloud based PBX telephone system. It relieves businesses of the need to invest in and maintain an on-premises PBX system, yet has the flexibility to integrate with and extend an existing PBX.

Cloud hosted PBX is a pay-as-you go proposition that easily scales to include more users as needed. With a cloud solution, you don’t have to over-provision your system to allow for growth. You simply buy more capacity as you need it. You also don’t have the agony of a “fork lift upgrade” that involves ripping out your old PBX and replacing it with a new one of higher capacity, more modern design or more features. All of those capital investment, installation, upgrades and daily maintenance tasks are taken care of by the cloud service provider. You just concentrate on those things that advance the business you are in.

Is your existing business telephone system creaking at the seams, or are you ready for the higher productivity that comes from advanced features such as fixed mobile convergence? If so, learn more and get pricing for cloud hosted PBX telephone services scaled to match the needs of your business, be it small, medium or enterprise level.

Fixed Mobile Convergence Comes To the Cloud

Most business professionals today are toting smartphones as well as tablets and netbooks or laptop computers. At the office, there’s a large monitor desktop computer connected to the company LAN and a desk speakerphone. The challenge? How do you make these devices part of a unified whole?

This is the challenge corporate IT departments have been wrestling with as the variety of communications devices has multiplied faster than the means to interconnect them. Many times, the best option is to print new business cards with separate listings for office phone, mobile, FAX, toll free and email. Did you get an important call on your office phone while you were offsite making a presentation? Oops. You’ll get it when you get back to the desk tomorrow. Or you can call in and check your voice mails tonight, write down the number and then call back the client when business hours resume. Just hope your competition didn’t return the call sooner.

Modern solutions to this dilemma of integrating disparate tools into a common business system include enterprise VoIP, unified communications and fixed mobile convergence. Getting wireline or network voice telephony to mesh with cellular phones has been a particularly knotty problem. The one area of commonality has been the public switched telephone network. But the PSTN likes each device to have its own phone number. What if you want one number to be able to reach you no matter where you are or what phone is handy?

Smoothstone IP Communications specializes in converging voice and data networks.
They were first to introduce a converged voice and data service over an MPLS network. One of their specialties is hosted PBX or cloud based telephony. The beauty of hosted PBX is that you no longer need make a major capital investment every few years just to expand or improve your in-house telephone system. The expensive and complex switching system is provided as a service over a SIP trunk from Smoothstone to your company.

What’s new is that Smoothstone and Sprint are now partnering to include cell phones and smartphones within the cloud-based telephone system. Users get to have a single phone number, a single voice mail, abbreviated dialing plans and sophisticated group and personal call controls that would normally be available only within the office environment.

What’s tricky about this is to maintain full QoS or Quality of Service controls to ensure that voice services maintain enterprise levels of quality regardless of whether they are being handled wirelessly or through the company’s converged voice and data network. This is where the integration of Smoothstone’s cloud services and Sprint’s 3G, 4G and Global MPLS networks seamlessly manage voice and data communications.

From a user or IT management perspective, the complexity of FMC is moved to the cloud where it is fully managed by the service providers. At the same time, Smoothstone’s other cloud based communications services are available as needed by a single office or a geographically diverse workforce.

Has your company hit a frustration level caused by yesterday’s voice and data networking solutions trying to meet today’s needs? Don’t try to re-engineer and finance a complete overhaul until you look at the options available to you with converged cloud-based voice and data network services. Check pricing and availability with a quick inquiry right now.