Category Archives: network

Everyone Seems to be “Hung up on VoIP”

It is AMAZING how many of our clients are all about “Don’t we need VoIP phones?” and “Don’t we need to get cheap VoIP truncks?” and “Aren’t SIP trunks cheaper?”.
Well, to answer ALL these questions… “YES”… under the right circumstances. Not everyone NEEDS more expensive IP phones. That’s right, I said it. I would LOVE to sell you more expensive endpoints and, WOW, I would REALLY LOVE to invoice you to rewire your entire building for Ethernet phone extensions, but, to be honest, YOU DON’T NEED THEM! (darn)…

You heard me. MOST small to medium sized businesses do NOT require IP phones. More importantly, their site Internet access will not SUPPORT loads of VoIP traffic with SIP trunks or phones either!

Most small businesses, EVEN WITH MULTIPLE BRANCHES, can take advantage of less expensive digital terminals and STILL utilize SIP trunks to save money by connecting their hybrid phone systems, such as the NEC SV8100 telephone system via IP daughter boards, such as the IPLB32 – opening a VPN tunnel between the sites where phone calls can be transferred back and forth. Again, this can be done with DIGITAL phones because the SYSTEMS are tied together with VoIP technology!

Before YOU make the mistake of spending an arm load of dough to buy fancy IP phones and swithces that, OMG, don’t work with your limited Internet bandwidth (ouch! YES, there’s the site limitation!) – call someone who REALLY knows their stuff that takes ALL of the environmental and carrier service capabilities into consideration before selling you what you THINK You need. It’s that simple.

Hey, don’t get us wrong – we LOVE the BUZZ words – they sell a TON of new equipment. But don’t sell yourself short and get a huge disappointment when you find out your new phones do not even work. Listen to a professional that can save you loads of money and aggravation by not only listening to what you want, but telling you EXACTLY what you NEED based on your requirements and local site capabilities.

Businesses Have Their Own Private Social Network!

Most people probably don’t realize that long before the explosion of Social Networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and LinkedIn (for business networking) every business to some extent already had their OWN social network – their business phone system.

Indeed, the business phone system links together everyone in a business and allows for communication between all members of this “community” via intercom. Furthermore, every time a speed dial number to a client or supplier is added to the business phone system, this private and very much unique social network grows by extension. As with a Facebook type social network, each of these added contacts to a phone system directory has their own set of unique contacts (both internally and externally), that may or may not eventually impact your own phone system network.

When you think of your business phone system in these terms you really start to understand the true importance of this key component of business equipment. Whether it be an IP capable system such as the Avaya IP Office phone platform or a more basic line such as the Nortel Norstar phone system, As your “social” network grows so does your business!

Enjoy your day and take full advantage of YOUR private business social network. 😉

Telephone Magic goes Facebook…

For everyone following our Social Networking experiment, here is our company Facebook listing:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Niagara-Falls-ON/Telephone-Magic-Inc/101953135681

My personal listing, including some photos of my son, dog, boat, oh yes and even me:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100000070211007&ref=profile

As per my profile:
“The grasp of social networking has taken a turn for the worse… it dragged me in too!”

The Social Networking Phenomenon

Well I must admit to being somewhat taken aback here. This whole social networking thing is an Internet explosion of often highly interesting and/or voyeuristic content from millions (billions?) of everyday people like you and I. I thought the Facebook craze was amazing but in my opinion Twitter has taken everything to the next level with “What are you doing?” – LOL!

I never thought the day would come when you could literally jump into someone’s back pocket (virtually ANYONE’s) but it has come to pass. Is it scary? Hmmmm…. maybe a little, but it is also AMAZING by it’s nature, offering updates of people’s thoughts and activities though a web GUI or even more importantly (from a telecommunications standpoint) via your mobile phone.

People are literally offering up their thoughts on a myriad of topics (literally anything qualifies as content here!) and others around the world are connecting to and following that content on an on-going basis. Now you CAN control WHO follows your Twitter feed (if you wanted to create a private network) but what’s the fun in that? Don’t we all want to feel like we matter? Well at Twitter, you have a forum to become important (or at lease interesting) to as many people as you can attract via your “content”.

It’s a crazy world we live in… (and now I have to go buy a BlackBerry!) 😉