Easily manageable, hassle-free deployment, minimal downtime, and savings seem like a symphony to the ears of any business owner when it comes to installation of a communication solution. However, VOIP technology offers all these perks to any modern enterprise. The fact that many businesses are leveraging the above-mentioned benefits and VOIP is based on the latest protocols makes the technology a wide playground for technologists with respect to research and development.
Before peeping into the future of VOIP telephony, it becomes imperative to understand the deliverables of the best VOIP systems for small businesses. The technology offers a plethora of benefits such as:
Convenience: With an intuitive user interface, maintenance and management of VOIP telephony systems become an easy feat. The small and medium businesses don’t have to shed a huge chunk of their budgets in recruiting IT and admin staff for constant monitoring of the communication solution. Furthermore, communication over IP protocols offers a bouquet of features and takes communication convenience a notch higher.
Scalability: VOIP phone systems with IP at core offer flexibility to add or remove the number of users as per the requirement of businesses. The facility to register the number of users on the same system allows entrepreneurs to save on investment costs, training time, and more.
Efficiency: Unified Communication servers merge different work applications such as Instant Messaging (IM), Calling, Presence Sharing, and Mailing on to one screen and eliminate professionals’ struggle of juggling between multiple screens and hence boost their efficiency.
Cost-effectiveness: Multi-location connectivity enables the authorities to bring employees working at different offices under the same communication network. By bringing all professionals on the same network, VOIP slashes down the telephony costs to a certain extent.
The brief description of VOIP attributes gives a clear picture as to what benefits small and medium businesses can reap from the communication technology. But VOIP being the most experimented technology the question lingers on whether these advancements will continue benefiting the businesses or there would be some repercussions of the same.
To know all the potential experiments and developments in the field of VOIP communication technology, read on:
IoT – a Core Component of Every Enterprise Mobility Strategy
In the very near future, VOIP telephony will graduate to Internet of Things. As per a study by a leading research firm, by 2020 almost 26 billion objects will be connected with the common thread of internet. The definition of IoT goes as the VOIP connection between two devices. IP telephony will become the principle chunk of IoT as VOIP enabled phones will then be designed for home automation purposes as well. Mobile employees will use their desk extensions to reserve their desk space, switch on their monitor screens and conclude miscellaneous tasks before they reach office. The employees who are on leave or on official tour can transfer their desk extensions to a particular desk number or to their mobility extensions.
Integration of Multiple Work Tools
VOIP technology is already offering amalgamation of gazillion work applications. The same trend will continue in future to enable employees complete their tasks efficiently by accessing multiple tools from the same screen. Integration with cloud-based programs and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) will continue to rule the professional applications development world. The IP technology will integrate marketing and social media tools helping marketing professionals to achieve the goal of omnipresence.
Increasing Proliferation of 5G Technology
With the dramatic increase in the use of smartphones for work, the enterprises and employees are counting internet connectivity as forces to determine the precision and speed of completing work tasks. In the near future, with the rollout of 5G technology, the speed of internet would be 10 times higher than the current 4G speed. Increased internet speed will improve the quality of VOIP packets, reduce the jitter in IP telephony and make call drops a fading reality. 5G technology will take Unified Communications to a whole new level by allowing 4k and 8k video conferencing. Improved speed will also make the exchange of video data a cakewalk with minimal glitches.
James Luke