Unified Communication

Let’s consider an example; when we call our bank, they usually have an automated system that says “press 3 to check your balance” and when we press 3 it says that your current balance is X amount.

These automated systems are tied to a database and to do that the banks used to buy very expensive boards and PBX system and proprietary communication that allows them to bridge voice and data world just to allow you check your bank account through phone. 

 

 

Well in the new world we need a simpler system to allow all of those things to come together. People now don’t call their banks to check their balance, as they log on to a web site and see their bank account balance via online banking. So each area used to be a separate world and that’s where we are going to look at the change. 

 

The Cisco’s goal and the goal of the other competitors in the industry is to unify that world. If we get into the Cisco’s world we will hear that term Unified Communication a lot. We can call it new corporate strategy world as well. 

When Cisco got into this world they had a theme called AVVID (Architecture for Voice Video and integrated Data). They used to use this world in a lot of conversation and a lot of people didn’t even know what it was, so they changed it to Unified Communication in which voice, video, and data all goes across the same network.

Now-a-days bandwidth capabilities are increasing and we are able to carry all this new kind of communication like HD video. SP saw this opportunity and has long since been combining their networks and we see phone providers now offering high speed DSL. And you see all the cable service providers now offer cable modem, cable TV service and phone service, all through one medium. 

All these networks are coming together and this allows new opportunities into businesses and homes to get all kind of different communications. Technologies like Dish TV not have been possible without combining these networks together where we can chose what programs we want to chose, record and watch and we can also pause live TVs. 

Cisco is huge in this world as it is going to make a lot of money. As when people will move to VoIP world they will buy all new switches and all new routers that can support new capabilities. And this will cause people to upgrade their entire network infrastructure.