This blog has been started to enable me to comment on what is relevant to consumers of communications products in businesses in the UK. The industry is going through a more rapid change than it has ever seen and perhaps for the first time we are beginning to see how VoIP and the IP revolution is going to move telephony on from straightforward voice. With the advent of Web2.0 we are moving on from searching for the killer app (and deciding in the absence of being able to find anything that it must be voice after all!) to experiencing a rich mix of communications capabilities and services. What is more our imaginations are being inspired to come up with new ideas at an unprecedented rate.
Having seen it all start in the consumer space companies are now beginning to understand how to apply web based services for business. At Timico, for example, we use the whole gamut of technologies that might be considered to have started in the consumer space and moved into B2B (presence, IM, blogs, wikis, VoIP to name but a few). We were the first service provider in the world to introduce SIP trunks based on the AS5200 SIP platform to the Nortel BCM PBX and first to provide a mix of Nortel hosted carrier-side Unified Comms services as an overlay to Enterprise products.
Capabilities that might have historically been in the domain of the large enterprise are now entering the world of the smaller businesses. Access to smaller customers is being made easier by the advent of e-business. Reach is increasing and costs are coming down.
There are other interesting dynamics at work. The move to a web based environment is creating a huge demand for collocation space at a time when power is at a premium and the green agenda is coming to the fore. This is in turn bringing forward developments in power reduction and the implementation of virtual technology. Increased web usage is driving up costs for ISPs whilst at the same time users expect to pay less. Investment decisions are becoming more complex as are the technologies needed by business and as a result outsourcing is becoming more and more the norm.
It is an exciting time to be playing the game and in this blog I will be discussing what’s new, what’s useful and hopefully having a good time whilst at it.
