The VoIP Channel
Powerful arguments for SMEs to put their IT in the cloud
We’ve talked often in this column about the arguments for using a hosted IP telephony service - like that provided by M5 Networks - rather than installing an IP telephony system on your own premises, but telephony is only one of the many functions essential to any business that are provided from systems comprising computer hardware and software. Now, research firm IBRS has spelt out the compelling arguments why businesses, especially SMEs, should abandon the practice of running IT systems on their own premises in favour of facilities that are centrally located and managed by specialist providers.
When ‘business-grade’ - means ‘consumer grade’
Small businesses are a major part of the Australian economy and a very substantial market for telecommunications service providers. Yet it seems that they often have to make do with consumer grade services.
Beyond unified communications: the socially networked enterprise
There’s a school of thought that says the established tools of enterprise communication - telephony, instant messaging, email and video - don’t cut the mustard even when glued together with presence and presented as unified communications and collaboration. What’s needed to make a business really hum along, the argument goes, is enterprise social networking.
The case for clouding unified communications & collaboration
The communications requirements of most businesses now extend well beyond telephony. They embrace email, instant messaging, voicemail, video conferencing and ‘presence’. Ideally every one is integrated with the others to create a suite of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) tools. As businesses contemplate on implementing or upgrading their facilities, they are increasingly facing the question: to cloud, or not to cloud?
M5 keeps calls coming when the power goes out
On 22 August at 4.30 pm - just in time for the evening rush hour - an Ausgrid technician working in a substation in Canterbury cut power to a swathe of west and south west Sydney stretching from Petersham to South Strathfield, Belmore and Earlwood.
Take this webinar diet and avoid presentation ‘infobesity’
How often have you sat through a presentation where the presenter did a ‘show up and throw up’, bombarding you with a mind-numbing amount of information, the key points lost in a deluge of infobesity?
Speed with ubiquity: the goal of the NBN
The Australian Government has set an ambitious goal: that by 2020, the level of telework in Australia will have doubled so that at least 12 percent of employees will have a formal telework arrangement. The most basic prerequisite for teleworking is a reliable VoIP telephone service that enables the worker to be functionally integrated into their employer’s communications system.