If
you are a
decision
-maker or involved with any aspect of business
intelligence in your company, you will benefit enormously from
attending the BI Summit and James Taylor's
decision management workshop.
[Johannesburg,
4 November 2005] - Although
the world was not ready for the first Selsius Systems Internet
Protocol (IP) phone, introduced in 1997, the benefits of that
early release are now being reaped.
This is according to Richard Dodsworth, business
development manager, Voice Technology Group, Cisco Systems,
Asia-Pacific, who was speaking at VoiceComm 2005 in
Johannesburg yesterday.
Simplification, applications, service optimisation and
security are some of the key issues regarding IP convergence,
he said. “Convergence is not just about saving money, it
drives applications to join voice and data together.”
Citing teleworking, e-government, economic loss due to the
resilience of networks and IT spending as key trends of the IT
convergence environment, he said that Cisco's technology
vision is to integrate people, networks and applications.
“It's Cisco's vision to integrate technology while
accommodating the individual's requirements of providing them
with the type of notification they would like to receive. The
idea is to create rich media, which will be a combined, single
interface which includes video, Web, data, voice, telephony
and desktop functions.”
VOIP
networks
Andrew Border, senior
manager IPC product management Cisco Systems, also
speaking on VOIP at the event.
The company has identified the applications that drive
convergence and topping the list is conferencing (61%),
which facilitates the running of large corporations,
especially those that operate on a global scale. IP
phone-based productivity (58%) and remote access (52%) have
also been found to be major drivers.
This vision is being facilitated through product
development and releases, such as one-number-reach. This
technology allows an individual's cellphone, office phone
and/or home phone to be accessed via a single telephone
number. This personalisation will allow the user to be
tracked, not the device or directory service.
If
you are a 
