FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - VoIP and other IP communications features will be embedded rapidly in business software to expand the usefulness of future applications, according to experts at last week's Internet Telephony Conference and Expo.

Rather than being separate applications that users turn to when they need to reach others, elements of IP communications will be drawn into business applications on a Web-services model. This is possible because VoIP breaks down into separate components all the elements, such as presence and call setup, that have traditionally been boxed up and inaccessible inside PBXs. The only way around this was computer-telephony integration, which required writing code to specific applications for specific proprietary PBXs.

VoIP and other IP components let software developers blend communications elements they need to make better business applications.

For example, if an accountant needs to have a conference with an auditor and his manager, the means to pull together the call, videoconference or instant-messaging session will be present in an accounting application.

"VoIP becomes part of Web services, opening the communications platform up so any business application inside the enterprise can benefit from making it easier to connect with other people," said Todd Landry, vice president of marketing for IP PBX vendor Sphere Communications, who spoke on a panel about the future of VoIP.

The show, which attracted about 125 vendors and 8,000 attendees, featured keynote speakers such as former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge, who said that integrated IP communications was not only good for business but also essential to national security.

"The [National Security Agency] can already pull conversations of terrorists out of the air," which is useful in tracking down suspects, Ridge said. But in the future, converged IP communications will be key to responding to terrorism by integrating stored data about sites of disasters with real-time data from the scenes.

This public-safety aspect of converged communications is one example of blending IP communications with applications, conference speakers said. VoIP, IM, teleconferencing, e-mail, voice mail, videoconferencing and other modes of communicating will be controlled by a combination of Session Initiation Protocol proxy servers that set up communications links and presence servers that publish who is available and how, said keynoter William Rich, CEO of PingTel and a proponent of the open source IP PBX sipX.