Massive Economic Upside for Unified Communications

A significant new analysis of the economic potential of video, data and voice systems that work together over the Internet -- known collectively as Unified Communications (UC) -- demonstrates that when these collaboration technologies are interoperable, they deliver clear commercial and consumer benefits.

The paper, written by Dr. Michael Katz and Dr. Bryan Keating studies the current unified communications market. The Katz/Keating study outlines the potential negative outcomes for the market of some UC vendors refuse to adopt industry standards that would enable video-to-video calls between different systems.

"The economic effects of incompatibility are not an abstract academic theory," Katz said. "There are real, everyday consequences to economic growth, consumer well-being and business productivity when one company has a proprietary Internet video system that does not work with others. This means less jobs will be created and people and businesses will not be able to communicate as freely, thus negatively affecting global economic potential. Our strong view is that government should monitor this market carefully to ensure that the implementation of standards is not blocked by dominant players seeking to gain competitive advantage."

UC  technologies -- especially video calling -- have been found to improve collaboration, boost productivity, reduce travel costs and enable remote training and services in health care and education.

However, according to the research by Katz and Keating, industry standards are critical to the future growth of the UC market. The market study reports that analysts at both Gartner and Frost & Sullivan find that interoperability is an important consideration for enterprise customers and that standards will increase flexibility for users as well as help lower costs.

"UC has the potential to be a huge growth industry at a time when many sectors are stalling," Keating said. "As with the Internet, we can't afford to have a ‘go-it-alone' mentality in this area.  We must do everything we can to ensure that companies adhere to the common global standard for video calling so that businesses and consumers reap the full benefits of these compelling communications platforms."

The study, commissioned by Cisco, included these findings:

• UC technologies have significant potential to increase business productivity but the lack of interoperability is an impediment to widespread adoption.
• UC is particularly susceptible to market failures that could impede standards based interoperability: (a) there are powerful network effects, meaning that the technologies become more valuable as more users are connected; (b) there are significant costs associated with using multiple vendors or switching from one to another; and, (c) certain vendors have large installed bases and important complementary products.
• Under prevalent market conditions, those vendors who would gain a competitive advantage when networks are proprietary can have incentives to thwart interoperability by undermining industry standards or refusing to adopt them.
• For these reasons, Katz/Keating conclude, the UC market should be monitored closely for signs of specific anti-competitive conduct.  When there is evidence of conduct that could or has adversely affected competition through effects on interoperability, government should address that conduct and impose appropriate remedies that would ensure adherence to agreed-upon industry standards. 

The economic study follows two recent surveys in the U.S. and in Europe which showed strong support for video technologies working together.  Nearly four in five likely U.S. voters surveyed believe it is important for technologies such as video calling to work together to help create jobs, promote innovation and deliver critical benefits in remote health care, education, business and other services.  And 84 percent of European consumers surveyed believe that video calling should be as easy as making a phone call.

The use of video by consumers, government and business is growing at a staggering rate.  According to the Cisco Visual Networking Index, in just three years, one million video minutes (the equivalent of 674 days) will traverse the Internet every second.  Use of video calling services is also increasing. Share your support for an open video community.

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How Mobile Applications will Transform all Businesses

Mobile communication related activity is now considered the number one business technology issue on the minds of IT professionals in the Asia-Pacific region, according to the latest market study by IDC. Their analysts have been exploring, in depth, what mobility really means for organizations and how utilizing a variety of commercial mobile applications will become the norm in the near future.

Clearly, enterprise mobility has been a familiar topic for savvy business and technology leaders within most multinational organizations. For many companies it means mobile email, perhaps some form of unified communications (UC) or fixed mobile convergence (FMC).

Moreover, for the more adventurous IT leaders, they have already embarked on extending workplace applications into the mobile environment.

How Mobility Supports Operational Business Goals

Tim Dillon, IDC's Associate Vice President for Asia-Pacific says, "That's yesterday's view. It's changed. Organizations that continue to take enterprise mobility for granted will be swept aside in the new environment. Today, we’re seeing what we could call a perfect storm, created by the evolution of different areas of technology combining to fundamentally, and drastically change how organizations can use enterprise mobility to support business goals and strategies."

IDC research clients are seeing new access networks, new devices, new mobile operating systems, business related applications (apps), platforms and delivery models come together to create an all-embracing enterprise mobility.

Previous IT turning points were the move from mainframes to desktops, and the growth of Internet access. Now, new mobile devices and numerous productivity-oriented applications will constitute the next wave of business technology adoption.

Amongst the many issues that IDC will continue to explore, perhaps the changing landscape for devices is most prevalent -- where media tablets, such as the Apple iPad, and large-screen smartphones can now run almost fully functional versions of all enterprise software and services.

Smarter and more capable mobile operating systems, along with the applied talent of independent software developers, are providing the market with the ingredients for an agile ecosystem that can quickly mobilize these new applications -- extending the functionality of virtually all IT systems to mainstream mobile devices.

Mobility Combined with Cloud Computing Services

Dillon adds, "ICT is evolving on multiple fronts to create a true revolution in mobility. As enterprise applications become mobile, the boundaries of the enterprise become extended and blurred. With the constant evolution in devices and applications that tap into the core enterprise systems, all systems become increasingly vulnerable to the acts of negligent users and malicious attacks -- companies will need to pair pervasive mobility with ubiquitous security."

Furthermore, as more and more communication and collaboration applications transition to the cloud -- via either managed public or private cloud computing services -- demand for mobile access is likely to increase, in line with the continued user adoption of multifaceted smartphones and purpose-built business-centric tablets.

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Redefining Mobility in the Workplace with Cisco Cius

Cisco has introduced the AppHQ -- an application ecosystem built specifically for Cisco Cius that provides new ways to create, manage and rapidly deploy tablet applications in the enterprise.

Cisco Cius, an Android-based tablet created for the enterprise, combines voice, video, collaboration, and virtualization capabilities unlike any other tablet on the market today. With Cisco Cius, organizations can now deliver an optimized tablet with enterprise-grade security, as a natural extension of the enterprise network.

The device provides customers with mobility, centralized manageability, virtual content creation and computing capabilities, and a comprehensive suite of collaboration applications.

AppHQ provides developers with tools and resources to create, test and market applications for Cisco Cius, and allows IT managers to control which applications can be used on the devices. Additionally, companies can create private, custom-branded application storefronts for their organizations where employees can find, publish and procure applications that complement their business environments.

Introducing Cisco AppHQ: A Trusted Source for Business Applications

Cisco AppHQ is a highly secure, cloud-based user storefront that provides capabilities for end users and IT managers not found in other application stores today. Some of these capabilities include:

• Testing and validation: IT managers want to know that applications deployed in their environment are appropriate for the enterprise. Cisco AppHQ provides IT managers and users with a trusted source for applications, ensuring that every application within AppHQ goes through Cisco validation testing, whether developed by Cisco, third-party Android developer partners, or users within the enterprise. The validation process includes interoperability testing both for the application itself and in typical configurations within the device.
• Store-within-a-Store: Enterprises will have a Cisco hosted, highly-secure and private application store within AppHQ. Businesses can customize the storefront, following their corporate branding guidelines, including use of logos, icons and color schemes. Beyond customization, the store-within-a-store is a platform that customers can use to deploy applications efficiently in their organizations.  For example, a financial services company could deploy applications pertaining to their back office operations, such as human resources or payroll apps, and populate those applications on the devices of relevant employees. 
• Empowers IT management: With AppHQ Manager, IT will have the ability to allow (or deny) access to application marketplaces by user role or device and to grant (or deny) access to applications by type, source or category. This unique capability will let IT organizations balance the individual freedom of users with the enterprise-class policies on security and cost efficiency.

"The promise of mobile Unified Communications and Collaboration for decentralized, accelerated decision-making is coming to light with the advent of intelligent 4G LTE networks, the cloud and enterprise tools such as the Cisco Cius. Our sales teams and customers will continue to benefit from cloud-based enterprise apps that help them get the job done from virtually anywhere with greater collaboration and speedier service delivery to their customers," said Mike Smith, vice president enterprise communications, network and mobility, Verizon.

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Demand for Managed Multi-Service Business Gateways

We're clearly in a period of global IT market transition. Enterprises are moving more applications, data and associated services to the central data center. Meanwhile, more small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are relying on managed service providers to deliver various types of hosted service offerings.

These trends are driven by cost savings that are realized through consolidation -- the impact reaches beyond basic data processing requirements, as it also impacts traditional voice communication needs.

SMBs are turning to hosted Centrex service, and enterprises are moving PBX capability and SIP trunking -- a VoIP solution based on SIP protocol -- to the unified data center.

Looking to support less infrastructure on-site, branch offices and SMBs are able to consolidate multiple services into a multi-service business gateway (MSBG). According to the latest market study by In-Stat, they have forecast that the growth of MSBG revenues in the SMB market will exceed $1 billion in 2015.

"The health of the MSBG market is closely linked to the health of the worldwide economy," says Norm Bogen, VP Research at In-Stat.

Economic growth leads to the establishment of new businesses and branch offices -- essentially driving new demand for MSBGs. However, the pace of new branch offices worldwide is expected to slow over the next five years, but this will be offset by acceleration in the establishment of small businesses.

As the economy recovers, new and evolving small businesses will flourish -- plus new technology, including the MSBG, will enable small firms to be more competitive with larger firms.

In-Stat's latest market study findings include:

- Revenues generated from MSBG sales are expected to grow at a lower rate than unit shipments.

- Worldwide annual shipments of MSBGs will approach 1.8 million units by 2015.

- Cisco has gained an overwhelming share of the MSBG market.

- Nearly all MSBGs marketed for enterprise branch office applications will need to offer some form of unified communications functionality.

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Managed Services Gaining Global Momentum

Savvy business leaders are increasingly turning to managed services to enable them to focus more attention on their core competencies, according to the latest market study by Pyramid Research. Managed services free up valuable IT and networking resources, decrease staffing needs and enable investment in activities that differentiate companies from their competition.

That said, the primary adoption driver is the current state of the global economy. As business leaders everywhere face increased financial pressure, they’re looking to managed services to offload their capital expense burden and improve operational efficiencies.

Analysts typically define managed network services as the management and monitoring of telecom infrastructure or applications by a third party -- either with equipment at the customer’s premise or hosted in a managed services provider (MSP) data center.

Responding to the Growing Global Demand
MSPs have responded to the increasing demand for new managed cloud services with a dramatic increase in investment to grow their managed services portfolios to include different types of out-tasked IT services for their customers. They are creating additional services that can be layered on top of the basic transport network offerings.

To learn more about the current market potential, Pyramid Research conducted an independent survey of more than 200 IT professionals from around the world to determine the types of managed services they’re using.

Primary conclusions from the market study include:

• Executives polled were willing to spend a large portion of their IT budgets -- between 10% and 20% -- on network-centric managed services, as the providers continue to prove the value and reliability of their offerings.
• The majority of enterprises -- almost 60% -- already use a managed service and have been doing so for between one and four years.
• Europe still has had the highest adoption of managed services -- driven in large part by the challenges of managing and maintaining business across multiple borders. However, the economic recession drove more North American companies to adopt managed services -- to lower costs and improve employee productivity.
• Additionally, emerging markets, such as those in Africa and Latin America, are preparing for managed services -- especially as broadband network access becomes more established.
• Multinational corporations and large enterprises have the most uptake in network-centric managed services, with SMEs now also looking for proven solutions that lower their costs.
• IT managers are applying a significant portion of their budget to managed services. Almost 25% of enterprises spend between $10,000 and $50,000 annually. Additionally, 26% of enterprises allocate between 10% and 20% of their IT budgets for managed services.
• The types of managed services that MSPs are providing are growing at a phenomenal rate. They manage everything from unified communications (UC) applications, to network security, to network connectivity and telepresence video collaboration services.
• Service trends over the next 18-24 months include managed machine-to-machine (M2M) services, such as automotive telematics, smart utility metering, fleet management, mobile health, point-of-sale transactions, mobile computing, wireless alarms, remote monitoring and wireless local loop (WLL).
• Growth is expected to continue throughout the U.S. and Europe -- especially in Eastern European countries, over the next 18 months. Latin America and Asia will provide continued expansion of these managed services.

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Shared Vision for the Future of Hosted Collaboration

With the increased reliance on IT from business leaders, it's important for CIOs to understand the concerns of CEOs and the implications they may have on IT, according to Gartner, Inc.

"Business leaders see very uncertain times ahead in 2011, and they must defend growth despite falling business and consumer confidence," said Mark Raskino, vice president and Gartner Fellow.

According to Gartner's assessment, CIOs should target at least one major business process to be revolutionized or obliterated in 2011 or 2012 -- substantively improving how companies collaborate is one example.

BT and Cisco have a shared vision for the future of hosted collaboration and unified communications services, built on their insight across a variety of networked IT and communications services.

The companies' mutual understanding of complex network environments and solution provisioning has helped them deliver superior capability, service, and value with global reach.

BT and Cisco jointly addressed the ongoing transition to hosted collaboration, unified communications and Internet Protocol (IP) telephony services, including the developing demand for IP telephony as a cloud-based service, at the Gartner Symposium ITxpo 2010.

Collaboration: New Realities, Rules and Opportunities
Stephen Bruce, head of UCC and Mobility portfolios for multinational corporations at BT Global Services and Matt Rowan, manager of partner operations at Cisco, discussed the new realities, rules, and opportunities that stem from a cloud computing-based collaboration and unified communications strategy, including the implications of a utility-priced service.

Bruce said, "As more of our customers contemplate their end-of-life traditional telephony environments and look to embrace the cloud, they are obviously interested in the notion of moving their IP telephony applications into the cloud. The carefully planned transition to cloud-based IP telephony can help customers dramatically reduce upfront investment costs while accelerating the adoption of IP telephony and unified communications on a global scale."

Rowan said, "As businesses analyze their options related to the consumption of collaboration solutions, cloud models offer compelling value. We are seeing enormous demand for cloud based collaboration solutions. Customers are asking for a low risk, minimally disruptive transition, and I believe BT offers a solid answer."

BT, in collaboration with Cisco, announced its hosted unified communications and IP telephony service to business customers in the U.S. in June 2010.

The service allows businesses to bring converged voice, mobile and data services to every desktop in their organizations, using BT and Cisco's cloud computing-based technologies. BT can rapidly deploy services to both large and small sites, offering business customers significant savings as well as operational predictability.

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Culture is Key to Advanced Collaboration

Organizations that deploy the most advanced Internet protocol-based collaboration technologies achieve more than twice the return on their collaboration investment and perform better than their less collaborative peers, according to a thought-provoking Frost & Sullivan market study.

"Meetings Around the World II: Charting the Course of Advanced Collaboration," sponsored by Verizon and Cisco, examines how busy professionals in businesses and government agencies use advanced collaboration tools such as voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP), instant messaging or meeting via high definition video or Cisco TelePresence to get their work done.

The study is the first to develop a model for measuring a return on collaboration investment, the Return on Collaboration (ROC) Index. It establishes a progressive impact of deploying advanced Unified Communications and Collaboration (UC&C) technologies on business performance and measures improvements in areas such as research and development, human resources, sales, marketing, investor relations and public relations.

Advanced Collaborators Harness Competitive Advantage
The study also identified emerging business technology adoption trends and attitudes across the globe. Key findings from the study include:

• Businesses and government agencies deploying increasingly more sophisticated collaboration tools -- such as VoIP soft phones, immersive video and fixed mobile convergence -- saw a corresponding improvement in business results relative to the amount invested.
• The overall average ROC score was 4.2 -- meaning organizations received an average return of four times their investment in deploying collaboration technologies.
• The majority of organizations deploying UC&C report they are more successful than their peers compared to those not deploying UC&C (70 percent versus 47 percent).
• Of organizations deploying UC&C, 40 percent plan to increase spending.
• VoIP is leading the way for delivery of advanced communications and collaboration applications.
  

Why Corporate Culture is a Defining Factor
If you're thinking that simply deploying online collaboration tools will deliver results similar to the leaders -- then think again. Your work environment is truly instrumental to success.

How do the Advanced Collaborators attain an ROC score of 6.1? These organizations tend to have "open" entrepreneurial corporate cultures where individuals are accessible, and there's regular cooperation between business units.

"Meetings Around the World II confirms and extends the key findings of the original study and builds on those conclusions. This latest research shows adopting progressively more advanced unified communications and collaboration tools can help organizations achieve a corresponding return on collaboration and improvement across all business functions. This return was most dramatic in the areas of sales, marketing and research and development" says Brian Cotton, vice president for Information and Communications Technologies for Frost & Sullivan.

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The Secret of Business Growth in 2010

Having had their fill of the economic downside, business leaders are truly ready for the eventual upside. Apparently, U.S. companies are preparing for a global economic recovery to begin in the first half of 2010, according to a new "Road to Growth" market study from AT&T.

Key study findings include the following insights:

Business Agility and ROI Pressures
In today's economic climate, U.S. companies have significantly shortened the time frame over which a Return on Investment (ROI) is delivered.

More than half of U.S. IT executives stated they are under pressure to deliver a return on investment in half the time than their previous efforts. As a result, two-thirds cited that the change has affected their IT budgets, strategies and priorities.

The study found that companies are less willing to invest in longer-term projects -- where the return does not come quickly. One CIO stated that IT projects must give at least a 100% ROI in 12 months -- otherwise, the project is terminated.

Shrinking Costs, While Growing the Upside
No surprise, regarding the top-of-mind challenges. Cost cutting and increasing revenue remain the two primary business goals. To achieve those objectives, survive the recession and move towards growth, business technology strategies are focused on:

Reducing operating costs: 87 percent cited "reducing operating costs" as "extremely or very important." Improve collaboration with customers and partners: 85 percent cited "improved collaboration with customers and partners" as "extremely or very important." Enhancing workforce performance and productivity: 83 percent cited "enhancing workforce performance" as "extremely or very important."

Rise of the Any-Term Business Strategy
The study found that U.S. companies employ multiple strategies to address business goals, and do not distinguish between short-term and long-term strategies. It appears that U.S. companies are reducing the time period for their long-term forecasting until after the recession is over.

Moreover, the role IT plays in helping U.S. companies achieve long-term strategies is very similar to the role IT plays in supporting a company's short-term business strategies.

Ongoing Role of Business Technology
IT investments and priorities are very focused in a couple of key areas. The study found that "business continuity and security solutions" will have the biggest positive impact on business growth as U.S. companies prepare for an economic turnaround.

This is closely followed by "enterprise mobility solutions" and "Web delivery solutions." Areas of IT investment that are expected to have a high to moderate impact on businesses are "unified communications services" and "hosted solutions."

For more information, and a copy of the executive summary, visit the AT&T Road to Growth Study on their website.

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Managed Telecom Services Deliver Business Continuity Automatically

You never know when an unexpected turn of events is going to keep you out of your office. You may not live in earthquake country, or a hurricane zone, or a tornado corridor, but that doesn't exempt you. Everything from fires to broken water mains to police actions can unexpectedly mean that you're suddenly not able to do business where you thought you would that day.

Acquirent, an outsourced sales execution firm based in Evanston, Illinois, knows this all too well. When its eleven employees were told to evacuate the premises unexpectedly one day, they had no choice but to pack up and go. But the disruption was surprisingly minimal.

Built-In Business Continuity
Because Acquirent offers outsourced sales services, founder and CEO Pete Kadens had a high level of confidence in choosing an outsourced phone system. He had deployed Geckotech's hosted IP phone system, which meant that his telecommunications capabilities weren't even inside the affected location.

"We all just packed up our files, laptops and Cisco phones and went home," says Pete Kadens. "Everyone plugged in their office phones at home to their DSL or cable and the office was back up and running with no disruption of our business. Even during the drive home incoming calls were automatically redirected to our cell phones. Without Geckotech VoIP, I don't know what we would've done."

Managed Services Bring More Flexibility
Managed telecom services provide a great deal of flexibility for companies who don't want to own their own phone system, both in terms of adding people and avoiding capital expenditures. And VoIP systems bring added benefits in terms of integrated electronic in-boxes and easier collaboration between colleagues.

But they also bring an added measure of protection in the event of a disaster. If you have a small or midsized business, take a moment to think about how you would continue to communicate among colleagues and clients if you were unable to work from your office, and consider the value of managed telecom services in that situation.

Perhaps you've already considered a managed network services solution to reduce your operational costs, or free-up your valuable time to reinvest in your core business. Now you can add one more benefit to the list – have a game plan for the unexpected interruption to your business communication capabilities.

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Unified Communications Helps Law Firm Serve Clients

A professional education trains someone to be a lawyer, doctor, or accountant, but it rarely teaches them how to run a business practice – that's typically learned from experience. Ken Wolfe is a worker's compensation lawyer in Chicago with 25 years experience.

When he hung out his own shingle, he realized that in addition to being a lawyer, he was now managing his own business operations.

Among other things, that meant making decisions about choosing the best telephone system for his business needs. Wolfe thought he was playing it safe by setting up his operation with phone and Internet service from a leading telecommunications provider, using traditional technology.

But before long, he realized he missed many of the services that had been available at his previous firm, which had used Geckotech's hosted IP-based phone system. Lesson learned, he switched providers after a year.

Hosted System Brings Voice and Data Together
Because the replacement phone system was hosted, Wolfe no longer had to worry about leasing, managing, or maintaining the phone system. Because it was IP-based, his firm was able to take advantage of capabilities that integrated voice and data together.

For instance, his employees could easily forward calls to a different number, such as a home phone or cell phone if they expected an important call from a client – they could also route less crucial calls to voice mail if they arrived after hours.

Because Geckotech offers a variety of reports regarding phone services, Wolfe Law could track length of calls by client, which made professional services billing simpler. It could also track outbound calls by employee, inbound calls, and call length, among other metrics. It was also easy to add new employees to the system, simply by plugging in a new IP phone.

Increased Productivity, More Control
Wolfe Law also benefits from Geckotech's 24-hour support from a local help desk, a dependable monthly bill from one service provider, and built in disaster-recovery.

As Wolfe says, "In my practice, phone calls are extremely important, but they also can be the bane of my existence. Geckotech helps me keep them manageable and under control. I cannot imagine running my practice without it."

When it comes to telephone service, bigger is not always better. Sometimes smaller firms using IP-based hosted services, like Geckotech, can offer more creative ways to help businesses to not only track their communications expense, but gain valuable business insight from that data. Think about what kind of data you might be able to glean from your telecommunications system.

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Managed Services: Branching Out to Branch Offices

Companies with branch offices are facing a technology paradox: On the one hand, businesses are expanding their branch office locations by 6.8 percent annually. On the other hand, only 15 percent of those remote locations have on-site technology staff members, according to Nemertes Research.

Those stats beg the following question: How do you empower branch office employees with the proper technology when you can't afford to staff those remote offices with more IT staff?

The answer (as our regular readers already know) is managed services. Increasingly, companies are moving their IT assets out of remote offices and into either (A) a centralized data center or (B) an Internet cloud.

The march toward centralizing and virtualizing IT has some benefits and some challenges.

Next Generation Empowered Branch
The good news: Centralizing applications and IT infrastructure can make networks easier (and less costly) to maintain. The bad news: Accessing centralized applications from remote offices can be a painful, time consuming process. And application performance over a Wide Area Network (WAN) connection can be horrendous.

A range of managed services, however, can potentially eliminate those challenges. Application acceleration services, hosted VoIP, hosted unified communications and managed 3G services are now all mainstream solutions for branch offices.

And the trend toward managed branch office services will surely accelerate -- especially as companies explore next-generation technologies such as TelePresence.

The lesson for readers: Keep expanding those branch offices.

But, check in with managed service providers (from big companies like Verizon Business down to small companies like your local VAR or integrator) to see what type of managed branch office services they offer.

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Creative Applications for Managed Network Services

Perhaps the restaurant sector doesn't immediately come to mind when you think of creative applications of current business technology. But, that's exactly why it can provide a distinctive competitive advantage for a savvy forward-looking company.

Popeyes quick-service restaurant was founded in 1972 and has expanded to over 1000 franchised locations globally. A Popeyes franchise owner of multiple U.S. east coast locations became interested in using the latest communications technology to reduce his operational costs and streamline back-office functions at each site.

This upgrade included installing a new voice and data network that could manage secure credit card transactions. The decision was made to research a solution to update communication capabilities with a private Internet Protocol (IP) network.

A network using Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) technology was procured, replacing the cumbersome and outdated analog communication lines. Once the private voice, data, and video network was in place, the next logical step was to determine how to further gain cost advantages by leveraging this advanced infrastructure.

Built on a Solid Foundation
After carefully evaluating several telephone system solutions, the decision was made to use a hosted Voice over IP (VoIP) service from Geckotech, layered over the new backbone network. As a hosted service provider, Geckotech manages an off-premise voice solution that has built-in disaster recovery and very high reliability.

The Popeyes franchises are now able to fully realize the advantages of an outsourced VoIP phone system without having to purchase, maintain, or manage separate phone systems at each location.

All restaurant sites can easily reach each other using simple 4-digit extension dialing. They also benefit from one consolidated monthly telecom bill -- which includes unlimited local and long distance, advanced features like Auto-Attendant, eFax, Conferencing, and Unified Messaging.

Moreover, all of the outdated phone systems were replaced with one advanced VoIP solution, using Cisco Systems hardware end-to-end. As a result, Geckotech enabled the franchise owner to prepare for future business needs, based on a solid communications foundation.

The multiple locations benefit from a built-in disaster recovery plan, which reroutes all calls to a different office location should any site experience a disturbance or natural disaster. The new voice system has reduced overall operational costs by almost 40 percent at each site.

The Power of Strategic Foresight
In reality, there are few enterprises in the 21st century that are inherently low-tech. Every industry has its early-adopters of business technology that assess all the options, survey the competitive landscape, and then take decisive action.

The rewards clearly go to those business leaders who keep and open mind, and willingly embrace change –- especially when it equates to a quantum leap in progress.

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Globalization and the Small Business Teleworker

The trend of globalization, and the need to connect remote employees, now touches nearly every segment of American business -- regardless of organization size or industry. Here’s a case in point.

Founded in January 2001, Illinois-based Kirix began as a data analysis specialist for the recovery audit industry. They've done a lot of data analysis and software development work in that time and have had a particular specialty in identifying duplicate payments and other overpayment errors in large corporate accounting systems.

More recently, by generalizing their tool set and incorporating Web connectivity into their software, they apply that analytical firepower to all kinds of data -- regardless of where it is located -- even data that's on the Web.

The Borderless Communication Challenge
Benjamin Williams, one of the company founders, had been planning to relocate to Germany. As a valuable asset to their corporation, Kirix wanted to retain his services, but wasn't sure how the international transition might work -- particularly with the potential latency of connecting a Voice over IP (VoIP) phone halfway around the world.

Kirix turned to Geckotech to provide a fully hosted communication solution to enable their corporation to utilize Ben's services overseas, without compromising the quality of their voice and data network.

In this scenario, one feature has proven to be very beneficial -- four-digit extension dialing. This enables simple "internal" calls by dialing the last four digits of a direct-dial number -- even if that employee works in a different country, in another continent.

Unified Communications for the Teleworker
By using Geckotech's outsourced IP phone system, Kirix has been able to retain a key employee while conducting business overseas. The corporation's staff has been pleasantly surprised by the actual quality and reliability of their voice and data network.

"Four-digit dialing to my co-workers from Germany is obviously tremendous, but the quality of service is unbelievable," marvels Mr. Williams. "All that was required was a DSL broadband connection and my Cisco phone and I was making perfectly clear calls to my U.S. office as if I was in the next room over."

As more companies entertain the idea of employing the best talent that's available globally, the demand for the out-tasking of multinational IT and networking services will escalate. It's efficient, it's effective and infinitely more flexible to adapt to the changing communication and collaboration needs of a geographically diverse organization.

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Simplicity of a Managed Service Solution

By out-tasking business technology responsibilities, you can avoid the need to manage equipment and add operations staff, freeing your in-house talent to focus on strategic projects.

How would that work in practice? Here's a case in point.

A residential Real Estate brokerage, located in Chicago, came to Geckotech as a new business looking to differentiate them in a highly competitive market. The owner was looking for something unique, a communication solution to launch his new business -- without worrying about how a phone system worked. And, he needed a system that would easily scale, as they added agents.

The owner didn't want the distraction of managing hardware, but needed a high-tech solution for his mobile workforce and wanted to use technology as a competitive advantage -- as well as a way to recruit quality agents to the team.

Geckotech proposed and implemented a best-fit out-tasked solution at their new office, which included a private T1 connection, Cisco IP phones and network equipment.

"We coordinated the entire process through a dedicated project manager who made sure that our customer was informed throughout the implementation," says Josh Robbins, managing partner of Geckotech. "The new IP phone system allows his agents to print only one number on their marketing materials and be accessible via their cell phones using the Find-Me/Follow-Me function of the system which intelligently forwards callers based on their caller ID and the time of day."

The business owner was able to open his new firm quickly and without worrying about the technical infrastructure. By outsourcing their phone and data networks, they're able to focus on real estate transactions and growing the business.

Because Geckotech uses industry leading technology and a Cisco Powered network, the brokerage operations staff doesn't worry about outages or equipment failures that normally plague small businesses.

In summary, agents are completely mobile and free to communicate at will with their customers. They can log into the phone system from any computer connected to the Internet and receive their voice-mails or forward their calls. This solution created the ultimate win-win scenario – overall simplicity, plus inherent flexibility, by design.

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