VoIP Demystified

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"In the old world of phone systems, it was all under our control," says Poole, president of SPSCom, a solution provider in Cedar Knolls, N.J. "Now, voice is just one application alongside multiple solutions like messaging, storage, security and integration. I want to know how far I can expand my business to selling not just phone systems, but other apps associated with voice."

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Poole has hired data-networking engineers. He's expanded his service offerings around security, disaster recovery and storage--tangential skills necessary to unified communications. He's brokered a new relationship with Microsoft around the Exchange and Live Communications servers. And he's redefined the selling process with tools and guides that help customers understand today's much broader communications market.

Welcome to the world of unified communications, a market moving at breakneck speed; a market vendors and solution providers alike are still trying to define given the dizzying array of available products and systems. At its simplest, we're talking about the convergence of voice and data across common networks and any kind of device. The full gamut of technology--hardware, software, networking infrastructure and mobility--plays a role in this emerging universe. Some components are fully or nearly mature, such as e-mail and VoIP, while others, like videoconferencing, have kinks to work out.

Ample Communication Choices
Headlines trumpet a battle brewing between networking titan Cisco Systems and software king Microsoft. (Within days of one another, Microsoft bought TellMe Networks; Cisco trumped by acquiring WebEx.) Regardless, there's really no one-stop shop for unified communications. One can easily rattle off a long list of manufacturers that have skin in the game, including Adtran, Avaya, AVST, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, Nortel, Polycom, 3Com and many more.

Inevitably, consolidation will come.

"As the market matures and consolidates, we won't need as many [unified communications] vendors in each area as we have today," says Bern Elliot, research vice president at Gartner. "But this is a very long-range consolidation, and you won't see this market go down to just three big suppliers."

Solution providers with attractive bundling opportunities can offer customers a more efficient way to communicate to their employees, partners and customers. A recent Aberdeen study found that 77 percent of companies that employ unified communications do so to improve customer service. The VARBusiness 2006 Market Insight survey of enterprise and midmarket IT decision makers found that 40 percent are searching for technologies to improve employee communications and 29 percent seek solutions for better collaboration with suppliers, business partners and customers.

NEXT: Now comes the tricky part.