BroadConnect Telecom

There used to be a time when the challenge of an IT department was simple. It relied on commonplace technology where everyone had the same desktop computer connected 
to the same OS platform. Suddenly, the world changed, transforming into a society of
multiple platforms and an endless variety of devices. Every IT professional that is long in the tooth is now faced with sleepless nights attempting to figure out how to make a myriad of devices all work in unison across different platforms.

Finding a Solution

Many information technology professionals analyze existing BYOD strategies to help gauge the maturity levels of the business when developing a plan to manage problems and enhance efficiency. Studies indicate that well over 70% of businesses believe theircompany has a potential for VoIP (Bring Your Own Device) enhancements in their work processes. Nearly 59% indicate that without BYOD strategies, their business would suffer significant disadvantages over their competition.

Facilitating Collaboration

Research indicates that effective BYOD strategies will provide better management for devices which will help to empower the workforce. This includes encouraging workforce creativity, which can increase innovation, and provide more flexible work schedules while it facilitates collaboration and teamwork.

In all, the companies that have already incorporated BYOD strategies, and have them functioning in place will realize the greatest benefits. Additionally, companies believe that obtaining and maximizing the effectiveness of BYOD strategies provides them a high level of expectation in increased employee productivity, better customer response times, and overall enhanced day-to-day operations.

Research indicates that companies’ effective BYOD strategies will help clearly define roles of every member in the user community. This information would be stored in a central database providing support and tracking of each mobile user, along with application deployment.

Data Management and Security

Studies indicate that BYOD strategies should also incorporate data management and security, along with providing a positive impact for companies. The user-centric BYOD strategy should be based on customer satisfaction and employee productivity.

The Impact of a Portable Device

Incorporating personal tablet and mobile devices into the work environment certainly brings its own problems. However, it also serves to the benefit of employees and employers alike.

By incorporating steadfast BYOD policies, businesses and IT departments can continually avert the breach or loss of confidential data while providing enhanced productivity by the workforce, just by offering remote access. With the continuing changes in trends with corporate IT eco-systems, companies need to find instant solutions for these emerging technologies to ensure the security of their data, and the productivity of their employees.

After spending $230 million in May 2012 for Radvision, a video communications company, Avaya is quickly evolving videoconferencing technology to the next generation. Using their Aura Unified Communications solutions into mobile environments, Avaya will provide extensive integration from other companies including Microsoft, LifeSize Communications, Polycom and Cisco Systems.

With the recent trends of small and midsize businesses increasingly interested in going more mobile, Avaya offers UC platforms that easily integrate into existing systems. This allows company employees to perform work from the office via a large array of phones and mobile devices including netbooks, tablets and smartphones. Many companies are finding a competitive edge by using BYOD (bring your own device) technologies, and are quickly using the technology to expand their mobile workforce.

Real-Time Mobile Video Conferencing Solutions

For years, Avaya has worked on leading edge technology to provide real-time mobile answers in an effort to allow companies to collaborate quicker, and produce better business results, because they can make better informed decisions.

With the December 2012 announcement, Avaya has enhanced the video capacities of their Flair Experience platform that significantly leverages unified web, video, and voice experience that can easily interconnect with smart phones, tablets and PCs. Additionally, Avaya announced that their Aura Conferencing platform is built on SVC-based (Scalable Video Coding) switched video architecture. Through SVC technology, the system can easily support upwards of 75,000 video conference users, or 7500 sessions running concurrently.

A Mid-Market Communication Solution

Avaya also brought their Scopia XT5000 to market in 2012. This room-box video conferencing system – acquired through Radvision – is built on new technology. It has an embedded 4- or 9-point MCU (multi-point conferencing unit). The device is built to bridge multiple parties together in a single videoconference. Promoted as a mid-market communication solution, the Scopia XT 5000 integrates the company’s SIP trunking (Session Initiation Protocol) with the IP office telephone system for most small to medium businesses. 

Avaya recently added its Scopia Management System interface (browser-enabled) as a way to handle collaboration deployment of Macs and PCs. It also incorporates a variety of other features and enhancements including concierge service, and multi-tenancy abilities.

With the recent economic downturn as part of the global recession, many SMBs have turned to videoconferencing as a way to drive down their costs while increasing the efficiency of their workers’ productivity. By minimizing traveling expenses, the effectiveness of using video conferencing has proven to be a viable solution for many businesses. In the evolving world of communications, Avaya appears to be leading the way.

Many businesses quickly realized exactly how hosted PBX phone systems simplified the stress of doing business, during the holiday season. The hosted PBX system provided the company the opportunity to use a single phone number that could be easily answered at a variety of locations, unbeknownst to their customers and clients.

During the holiday season, companies often experience a lack of employee resources, as many take additional time off to be with their loved ones. Using a hosted PBX system, their communication lines were simply rerouted to available employees on their landline phones, cell phones, smartphones or nearly any remote location.

Having the ability to offer a single point of contact, with one single phone number to represent the entire organization, was the easiest way for the businesses to operate their communication systems. It allowed each business to function completely without the need of a traditional main office. This could happen because the hosted PBX telephone system instantly linked employee personnel to the business, with complete functionality of all of the communication system’s features.

Relieving Holiday Business Stress

Offering an extensive multi-modal contact, each employee quickly gained access to the entire company network through a whole host of telecommunication devices including landlines, ISDN, cell phone and VoIP. The hosted PBX telephony system instantly provided phone extension ringing to a single location in succession, or to multiple locations at the same time. This allowed instant 24-hour phone support seven days a week, and relieved stress on the company by always providing an employee or employees to handle any situation, even during hectic seasonal times.

Lowering Costs

Because there is no need to purchase PBX equipment when using a hosted PBX service, these companies were provided an effective call routing service at no additional cost. All unanswered incoming calls for the business were managed automatically by the PBX system by providing numerous features including voicemail, call records, faxing, automated messages, and conference calls, along with call routing touchtone menus.

Without the need of any excess additional cost for expensive software or hardware, and no cost for upgrades to change existing phone hardware, hosted PBX telephone systems offer viable solutions for many small, medium, large businesses.

These companies saw the advantage of using a hosted PBX system through the holiday season as their business increased. It gave them the ability to expand lines, without additional phone numbers. With the added flexibility and reduced cost of 24-hour client phone support along with never missing a call throughout the holidays, the hosted PBX systems offer each a viable telephony alternative.

Recently, InfoTrack, which is a division of the T3i Group, published a report which looked at the use of next-generation communications technologies, like hosted IPT and cloud computing, among companies of varying sizes. The report found that even though hosted IPT is often seen as a solution for small businesses which cannot afford their own telephone and computing servers, in fact large businesses are also eyeing a potential move to hosted IPT solutions. According to the data InfoTrack gathered, the portion of large businesses using hosted IPT solutions should nearly double in the next 2-3 years.

For the survey, InfoTrack asked a selection of medium and large companies what types of phone
systems they are using now, and what types they anticipate using two or three years down the road.
There were several possible answers to this question: stand alone hardware and software systems, corporate data centers, hosted or cloud computing, and not sure. 

At present, about 57 percent of large companies and 53 percent of medium companies reported using corporate data centers. Among middle sized companies, 53 percent also expected to be using corporate data centers two to three years from now, representing almost no change. The same was true of hosted and cloud computing: 21 percent of medium companies use it now, and 21 percent expected to be using it in two or three years.

But the big change was between large companies using corporate data centers now, and large companies that expect to still be using them in two or three years. Although 57 percent of large companies use them now, only 37 percent anticipate using them in two or three years. Meanwhile, 15 percent of large companies use hosted or cloud computing now, and 24 percent expect to be using those technologies in two or three years. 

This was a surprising finding for many observers of the industry, who tended to view hosted or cloud computing solutions as a better fit for the small and medium business brackets. But in fact, if the current numbers hold, much of the growth in cloud computing users should come from large businesses. There are a few different reasons why this could be, though perhaps the most likely of them is that large businesses have correspondingly large communications systems, and so stand to save the most money from switching to relatively cheaper systems like hosted and cloud computing. 

For more information check out http://www.broadconnectusa.com/    &   http://www.broadconnect.ca/

Nearly any device ever designed to transmit video and audio packets between computers that communicate with one another, uses Real-Time Protocol (RTP). After the can serve as became evident that people communicating online has the potential for ease dropping on their communication, RTP (Real-Time Protocol) was enhanced to us more secure level. The secure RTP was developed for authentication, encryption and integrity of the video and audio packets that were transmitted online to communicating devices.

Part of the process of transmitting video and audio media between computers is the employment of various protocols. One such protocol locates the remote device to negotiate exactly how the media will transfer flow between each device. These types of protocols are known as call-signaling protocols, with the most popular being SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and H.323. Each protocol relies on static provisioning and other protocols as a way to locate a variety of users.

First originated 1995, both SIP and H.323 were developed to solve the initial communication between two computers as a way to effectively exchange video and audio media streams. H323 experienced commercial success while SIP progressed at a slower level before being recognized as a standard in 1999.

Both protocols have the ability to perform the same action: to establish a multimedia level of communication including video, audio and other communications. However, there are designed significantly different with SIP being ASCII-based and H.323 being built on the foundation of binary protocol and legacy communication systems.

Although the jury is still out on whether SIP or H.323 can be held as the true standard for media transfer functionality, no one disputes the fact that both perform well. However, H.323 appears to be superior in a variety of ways including offering better support for videos, optimal interoperability with PSTN, premium interoperability of legacy video systems a more dependable out of band transport of DTMF.

Alternatively, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) was never designed to work as a solution for the problems handled by H.323. Additionally, it gained its popularity by misinformation of being “easy to debug and implement”. Built as a complex communication system, they both perform identical amounts of work using to different approaches.

Of the two, SIP implementation is far easier to troubleshoot or develop. Likewise, H.323 is still the protocol to use in bulk VoIP deployments, especially when transmitting voice calls globally. Additionally, H.323 is the protocol most used for room-based videoconferencing and serves as the #1 protocol for nearly all IP-based video systems.

Some competitors (You know who you are) are trying to discredit VoPI as unreliable, unsecure and not suitable for mobile workers. They also want you to believe that due to the dedicated private lines, it FORCES our customers to be locked in to lengthy contracts. This is simply NOT the case and couldn’t be further from the truth!

Let me break it down for you:

All VoPI is VoIP but not all VoIP is VoPI. Why does this matter, you ask? It matters because VoPI isn’t just one specific product or technology; in fact, it has been conceived and achieved over a multitude of different criteria.

When we use the term VoPI, we refer to Voice over IP service that meets certain standards:

• A connection that is not shared with other subscribers
• Provided by an ISP (internet service provider) who controls the voice service, as well as the internet backbone upon which the service rests
• A process which employs multiple SBC’s (Session Based Controllers)

Privacy implies security (which is abundantly important) but what VoPI really does is provide great stability. It’s a platform you can actually have faith in; as it rarely goes down.  Most importantly, it’s fully managed by us, the provider. Why does it matter if it’s fully managed? Well, because that means, in the event of a service outage (on the network side) we can take full responsibility. We can actually pin point and fix virtually any problems you may incur because it’s happening on our network!  

**WE GUARANTEE 99.9% UPTIME! Who else has the “you know what” to offer that???**

Here are some excerpts from the competitor’s blog (I’ll let our web-savvy readers find the source):

“Recently we’ve come across competitors using the term “VOPI”, or Voice over Private Internet. It’s their way of trying to confuse and complicate, […] to convince you that their technology is superior. Dive into the details and you’ll see that VOPI is actually a Hosted Voice providers’ way of selling you inferior connectivity in the guise of increased security.”

By no means does our voice solution operate over “inferior connectivity”! IT’S JUST AS GOOD as any other connectivity! What we do to deploy VoPI is first determine the best type of internet connection for our customers, and then create private connections to ensure that voice quality is never compromised.

Another excerpt:

“Companies will tell you that a private connection is more secure because your telephone calls do not traverse the public internet. […] If you are in an industry where security is paramount to you or eavesdropping is a common occurrence, then absolutely you should investigate the private option.

If that is the case, I’m sure you are quite familiar with this device, the STU-III, which is an analog telephone encryption device that you *must have* used up to this point to secure your calls. What? You mean you were using analog lines without them being private […] or without encryption in any form?”

The writer then goes on to suggest that distributed workforces, operating over the public internet somehow negates any perceived benefits of a private enterprise platform, VoPI™. South Park fans may be familiar with the term “Chewbacca Defence”, that is: making an argument soooo nonsensical that the reader’s brain shuts down and is forced into a receptive position. The fact of the matter is, unless you work for the US Military or National Security Agency, you will have never heard of the STU-III. It is proprietary and expensive technology that never experienced mainstream use.  The attractiveness of VoPI™ is that it does not cost more; it just requires that you pair with a thoughtful provider that operates a privately-owned and managed broadband network. Similarly, off-net users who connect to your office phone system via the public internet are not damaging, or defeating the purpose of your private connection. They’re just the public extensions of a very strong private network.

I don’t only say this because I work for BCT and they pay my bills. I say this because day in and day out I hear the horror stories of disgruntled end users yearning TO BE RELEASED FROM THEIR CONTRACTS and switch to our far superior service. It’s no fluke that Bradconnect Telecom has become one of the largest hosted providers in Canada. We revolutionized the industry back in 2005 as Canada’s first hosted provider and strive to be the pinnacle hosted provider across North America! (Btw, did I happen to mention we opened up shop in the States? Here’s the link, www.broadconnectusa.com , check it out.) None of our Canadian counter parts can say that… #JustSayin!

Commonly referred to as an “IVR” or a “digital receptionist”, the Auto Attendant is one of the most popular features offered to BroadConnect’s Hosted PBX customers. An Auto Attendant is designed to facilitate call transfers without the need for a receptionist.  As callers dial the business number they are greeted by a customizable message directing each caller to dial the extension or department they wish to be connected to. Once the caller has inputted the correct extension, the Auto Attendant automatically routes the call to the correct destination.

• Sub-greeting as an extension of the primary greeting. Such as: local directories, office hours and locations
• Department directories (press 1 for service, press 2 for returns, etc.)
• Dial-by-Name
• Multi-language support.
• Call routing to a live operator

• The Auto Attendant layout should clearly indicate what options are available to clients, but, it is important that the greeting now run longer than 15 seconds
• Once of the most important features to never overlook is the live operator support function. Many callers press 0 to bypass the computerized greeting and reach a live receptionist
• Always have the scripting written out before the greeting is recorded
• Be sure to record the greeting in an area that is free from outside noise or interference
• Never use a land-line or mobile phone to record your greeting, such phones do not allow for high definition call quality or clarity