Convergence improves productivity, promotes convenience and increases cost-effectiveness.
So says Chris Baisch, chief marketing officer at Nashua Communications, who adds that in order to fully realise the benefits of convergence, one needs to understand the technology prior to purchase to avoid being sold a solution they don't fully understand, while ensuring they deal with reputable vendors that supply quality products and support services. This is in addition to ensuring they have the necessary skills in house, or a service level agreement in place, to manage the technology post implementation.
He points out that VOIP has gained momentum and matured as a technology in the last few years. "There has been a strong uptake in IP-based PBXes. As a result, the convergence of voice and data being delivered over a single access circuit is also becoming more common. Converging voice, instant messaging and video, using a single unified communication (UC) platform, is also seeing some traction, but customers are not fully committed to UC yet," Baisch says. "This trend is predominantly being driven by mobility (BYOD), and users are starting to understand the benefits of having a single number service, a single call log, presence status and a central set of contacts across multiple devices.
According to Baisch, South African organisations still prefer to have self-managed, on-premise solutions in place. "There is obviously a growing trend towards using cloud-based services, but South African organisations are still a bit wary and reluctant to fully go that route. Bandwidth pricing, although coming down all the time, is also still a barrier to entry for most companies to effectively use large-scale hosted services over a single dedicated link," he says, adding that redundant links are not an option for small businesses at current price points, which means putting the entire business in the cloud is still quite risky.
"That said, there has been growth in the use of hosted PBXes in the last year or two. However, the adoption of more complex communications as a service (CaaS) offerings, such as hosted unified communications, is still in its early days," he says.
"There are many benefits of convergence, for example, simplification of ICT infrastructure resulting in lower overall monthly costs, improved cash flow with a shift away from initial upfront capex to more opex-based solution offerings, and opportunities to deal with fewer suppliers/vendors (ie using a single service provider), which reduces admin and support overheads together with those related costs."
On this note, ITWeb and Nashua Communications have unveiled a Convergence Survey, which aims to gain insight into the South African convergence landscape.
Says Baisch: "This means trying to gauge the level of understanding that people have around convergence; to establish the status of the convergence strategy in South African organisations; and to ascertain the extent to which convergence technology has been deployed in these organisations."
To take part in the survey, and stand a chance of winning a 16GB Apple iPad Mini (WiFi and 3G), click here.
The survey will run from 12 to 26 August.
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