Unified Communications

Unified Communications is the emerging technology which integrates telephony, your email systems, your computing applications (CRM, Workflow, Google, etc), and your mobile devices (Blackberry, iPhone, Windows Smartphone, etc) together into one ubiquitous solution.

Today, the communications world is split. The split exists because most real-time (synchronous) communications like telephone calls and voice mail depend on one network, while message-based (asynchronous) communications like e-mail, CRM, Salesforce.com, etc depend on a separate, incompatible network.

The split creates many problems. Phones aren't as intuitive as they should be. On a computer, you can check your e-mail, but not your voice mail. And then there's the enormous cost of purchasing, maintaining, and upgrading two complex infrastructures.

Microsoft Unified Communications technologies combined with Alteva's Hosted Telephony Systems merge theses worlds together creating a very intuitive and productivity increasing solution.

How Will Unified Communications Benefit Business?

The computers on your network gain the functionality of advanced VoIP phones. Users can click to call any contact in their address book. A simple phone call can become a conference call or a video conference, on the fly. Voice mail and faxes move over the network like e-mail. They arrive in your Microsoft Office Outlook inbox where you can sort, prioritize, and forward them, just like any piece of e-mail. And when you're on the road, you can dial in over any telephone to hear your e-mail messages and your calendar. You can even access your Outlook address book and call anyone in it just by speaking his or her name.

When phone services become software, are managed by a server, and are delivered to desktop applications, many interesting things happen.

Your PC starts to work like a phone

To call someone, you just click on his or her name. The computer places the call. It doesn't matter whether you see their name in e-mail, inside Microsoft Office Word, or on a Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services site: their contact information and the ability to reach them is always present.

Presence is one of the key benefits of unified communications because it unites all the contact information stored in Active Directory with all the ways people communicate: phone, conferencing, instant messaging, e-mail, calendaring. People's availability, their contact information, and the ability to communicate with them are integrated and always just a click away.

The phone starts to work like a computer

Try this with a standard office phone: call someone, then add someone else to the call. Okay, now add ten people. Now, turn it into a live video call. Could you do it? Is it even possible?

With Alteva's Unified Communications technologies, you click to call. Click again and you can launch a conference call. Need video? It's a click away. It's that easy.

Voice mail becomes e-mail

Voice mail arrives in your Microsoft Office Outlook inbox, right beside your e-mail. That might not sound impressive, but have you ever tried to forward voice mail using the touchtone keypad on a telephone? When voice mail becomes e-mail, you can forward it just like any e-mail: to one person, a work team, or an entire department.

Phone calls become digital assets

Just like e-mail. Which means they can be logged, reviewed, published, and archived. Having a complete record and recording of every phone call is increasingly critical as businesses struggle to comply with stricter federal and international regulations.

Flexible and future-ready

By using a software solution to deliver unified communications, your business can stay flexible and embrace innovations as they come. The Microsoft unified communications platform of powerful APIs enables developers to extend that software solution with security-enhanced and productivity-enhancing applications that span all modes of communications. When emerging technologies and changing business needs require your communications infrastructure to adapt, all you have to do is extend or upgrade your software, not your hardware.

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