Unified Communications
Unified Communications (UC) is the evolution of voice over IP (VoIP) to multiple applications centered on a presence engine and automated provisioning. UC includes real-time and asynchronous communications and collaboration applications.
Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco are competing against traditional telephony vendors such as Alcatel-Lucent, Avaya, Nortel, and Siemens to provide converged telephony and collaboration solutions. The product and market strategy of each company varies, driving their offerings. Competition is further exacerbated by the division between premises-based systems and service provider offerings.
The renewed interest in video conferencing has been fueled high-end telepresence systems. Telepresence creates the illusion of “being there” through the use of high-definition television, a spatially driven audio system, and high-performance WANs. There are significant costs and network issues involved.
Within NTS, the following subjects are covered within this thread:
- Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP telephony
- Premises-based systems
- Service provider-based offerings
- Instant messaging
- Presence-based communications
- SIP trunking
- Videoconferencing, including telepresence
- Voice/video quality metrics
- Unified communications
- Microsoft Office Communication Server and IBM Lotus Sametime
- Voice mail and unified messaging systems
- Fixed Mobile Convergence (FMC)
This topic relates to the Network and Telecom coverage area - Planning and building network infrastructure for managing the convergence of voice, video, and data networks.
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