Sam Rozenfeld

A Grad Student Hacks Cisco’s VoIP Tech! Should We All Freak Out?

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One of the main arguments against IP telephony revolves around security. More specifically, there are some people out there concerned that IP telephony isn’t as secure as traditional telephony, and as such it isn’t viable to use in serious organizations, including large business or any group working in a highly competitive industry. This concern sounds legitimate at first, but it really doesn’t pan out when thoroughly explored, even when a big news story drops talking about a systemic vulnerability, as just happened when a 5th year grad student researcher at Columbia breached security in a Columbia VoIP phone and managed to record its calls.

First thing’s first, let’s start with the grad student’s achievement to evaluate whether it’s really as significant and ground-breaking as the media wants to make it seem.

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A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 2)

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Now, let’s say you run into a best-case-scenario when it comes to the dollars-and-cents comparison of your switch to IP telephony. Your current provider continues to sell their services for twice as much as the IP telephony provider you decided to switch to. This is great, but saving a little money for your organization isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially if you aren’t the final decision maker in your department.

Addition, Not Subtraction

Think about it this way- unless your department is already grossly over budget, or unless your department has been explicitly instructed to cut costs, saving money isn’t that big of a deal in-and-of itself. In the absence of immediate budgetary pressure decision makers aren’t looking to spend less. They’re looking to spend more and get more. Service improvements  help them meet their ambitions, impress their bosses, and to otherwise get more done than they’re currently accomplishing.

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A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 1)

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Price is a huge factor when it comes to deciding between sticking with traditional telephony services and making the jump to IP telephony. It’s one of the biggest selling points IP telephony providers use to push their technology, and it’s one of the clearest, firmest, more directly measureable ways decision-makers at an organization can see the benefit of switching over to IP. After all, while organizational flexibility and scalability are great benefits they can seem a little abstract, factors whose potential may be difficult to envision when a business is currently locked into a relatively fixed traditional telephony technology set-up.

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Is non-Interconnected VoIP a de-facto “Communications Technology”?

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There’s been a debate since the early days of non-interconnected VoIP over whether the technology counted as a bit of communications technology or an information technology. This sounds like a matter of semantics but legally speaking there’s a big difference between the two. Simply put information technology and communications technology are regulated differently and a whole lot of people fear non-interconnected VoIP is going to be named a communications technology and will start to face the same sort of regulation as the incumbent telecom players.

But here’s the thing- non-interconnected VoIP has pretty much already been named a communications technology, making it subject to a whole bunch of regulations that information technology finds itself immune from, some which non-interconnected VoIP has already begun to adopt.

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Is Emergency Calling VoIP and Hosted PBX’s Achilles’ Heel?

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Everyone’s minds have been locked firmly on the potential for disaster and the necessity of contingency plans in the face of some sort of operationally-debilitating experience. In the wake of recent environmental catastrophes the usefulness of remotely hosted communications systems has become blindingly apparent. VoIP and hosted PBX both make it much, much easier for an organization to regain its operational footing almost immediately after a disaster, even if that disaster lays waste to their offices and/or damage their in-house communications equipment. By remotely locating the guts of an organization’s communication systems VoIP and hosted PBX essentially make an organization’s communication systems as disaster-proof as possible.

However, some experts have raised a really good question when it comes to remote hosting of communications technology, and that’s the fact remote hosting can cause some real problems for emergency services.

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Is Regulatory Creep Inevitable for VoIP?

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You Are Not Supposed To Jump Over The NetThe threat of regulation, to one degree or another, often seems inevitable for the VoIP market. This wasn’t always the case. In the very early days of VoIP it seemed like the communications technology would remain independent of governmental interference, largely due to its net-based nature. Yet as VoIP use grew over the years, and as it became increasingly clear how big a player VoIP was going to be in the larger telecom market, the notion of regulation began to seem more and more inevitable and, to some people, more and more necessary to ensure the normal, everyday telecommunications technologies of the future continue provide reliable service and access to emergency services, to name just a few avenues of concern for VoIP users and potential regulators.

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Can Hosted PBX Improve Employee Retention?

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Most of the time we talk about the benefits of the Unified Communications, such as hosted PBX services, we talk about the direct benefits your business will enjoy. We often talk about the increased scalability and organizational flexibility that will give your business the ability to grow and shrink as needed. We often talk about the cost savings associated with hosted PBX and how these savings quickly and effectively mitigate whatever start-up costs your business may incur making the switch. We also talk about how hosted VoIP telephony provides business continuity services, and how it offers a wealth of intelligent features and improvements over traditional telephone systems.

All of these business-oriented benefits are true, but focusing exclusively on them obscures the human side of the equation- the fact that all the benefits offered by digital telephony directly assist your employees and improve their satisfaction with their jobs. In fact, a recent study has shown that VoIP telephony may do more than improve customer satisfaction, switching to Unified Communications will likely increase employee retention.

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Hosted PBX and Business Continuity in Times of Crisis

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With Superstorm Sandy causing untold destruction and massive disruptions to large swathes of New Jersey and New York City, some organizations have begun to wonder how, exactly, they’d fair if they were hit by a massive weather systems, while other organizations are left with the mess of figuring out how they’re going to rebuild their communications infrastructure in a manner that will ensure continuity no matter what happens. The solution both of these sets of organizations are looking for lies in a hosted PBX – the only cost effective communications solution that will help them get back up and running as quickly as possible no matter what happens to their HQ.

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PBX Market Bump as Q2 Results Roll In

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Any talk of the PBX market dying or of even slowing down need to be taken with a heavy grain of salt. We do understand why some people might say the PBX market is down for the count. The market isn’t seeing growth quite as explosive as when the tech went mainstream a couple of years ago, but a recent Infonetics report on the market’s Q2 2012 results makes it very, very clear that the PBX market still has plenty of room to stretch its legs. We’ve been saying for a long time that the next 5-10 years of PBX is going to be really exciting, and this Infonetics report seems to validate those suspicions.

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