Many enterprises who have implemented VoIP are now at the "what's next?" stage. They are thinking: "So, we can now safely and reliably send voice packets over the network and voice is just another application -- what else can we do?" This is the message from Steve Bergstrom, Enterprise Voice and UC Architect at Caterpillar, in this quickie video from the Cisco Live! conference. He doesn't offer any answers, but if you too are wandering on the convergence road, this short video might make you feel less alone.
More from Cisco Subnet:
Cisco Security advisories and patches
Nexus vs. Catalyst 6500
One or two more years before WiMAX will be hot
CCIE sentenced in Cisco SMARTnet fraud
Cisco's vision for the virtual data center
Free books, training, gift certificates -- giveaways for June from Cisco Subnet
Go to Cisco Subnet for more Cisco news, blogs, discussion forums, security alerts, book giveaways, and more.
The Cisco Subnet blog is written by Network World managing editor Jim Duffy and is the official blog of Network World's Cisco Subnet community. The Cisco Subnet site is managed by Online Community Editor Julie Bort. Cisco Subnet is the independent voice of Cisco customers and is your gateway to daily Cisco news, blogs, opinion, books, prize giveaways and more. Visit the Cisco Subnet home page daily and while you are there, subscribe to the Cisco Alert e-mail newsletter, which includes news and views generated by the Cisco Subnet community as well as Cisco-related stories on Network World and elsewhere on the Web.
The Leader in Network Knowledge
Bluntly speaking, it is the
Bluntly speaking, it is the fault of the network vendors that customers at one point even thought that VoIP, convergence, or even UC is an end-state. Once a customer implements any or all of the above technologies, they are absolutely "wandering on the convergence road."
Convergence, UC, and VoIP are just tools to accomplish something. The "something" typically lies outside of the abilities of network vendors so the tool is often marketed as the end state. Only when customers deploy these tools do they hit the "now what" factor.
Business process solutions are required to address the "now what" and fully utilize the capabilities available to businesses that have implemented UC, convergence and VoIP.
The previous commenter
The previous commenter nailed it. The vendors are nowhere to be found and there's a persistent skills gap in IT Departments. John Furrier hit on it earlier this week in a blog post at BroadDev.
In Furious Agreement!
The distilled essence for me is here:
"Convergence, UC, and VoIP are just tools to accomplish something."
In terms of my vendor expectations I look forward to the tools becoming even more intuitive, useful and dependable. That's it.
VoIP Phone Systems