Enterprises more than doubled their SIP trunking investments in 2011 compared with 2010, but the room for further growth is almost unlimited.

According to the industry analyst firm Infonetics Research, SIP spending was up 128 percent last year, making it one of the fastest-growing telecom services in North America. But even with that kind of growth, SIP Trunking accounted for only one of 10 trunks deployed here. More...

As wise old Ben Franklin said, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Of course, a penny had a bit more buying power back in Ben’s day, but let’s not be too literal here. If you can leverage technology to save your company money, then the mere act of NOT spending it in the first place is the equivalent of generating additional revenue.

The technology in this case is SIP Trunking, and while it is a foundational building block for Unified Communications, the truth is, many companies really only look at SIP Trunking initially for the sake of potential savings. More...

There may not be any such thing as a free lunch, but there just may be such a thing as free bandwidth.

Sound too good to be true? We can’t blame you for being suspicious, but Marty Parker over at NoJitter makes his case for leveraging Unified Communications to modify your mix of traffic in order to accommodate video with no need to add capacity. More...

It seems clear that as webpages become more interactive, with asynchronous Java enabling more and more functionality, that the line between what is a mobile web page and what is an app is starting to blur. Facebook is apparently working on an initiative to blur the line even further. More...

The explosive growth of the tablet over the past year is well documented, but until recently, I never believed that tablets could eventually replace laptops altogether. Today however, in this cloud-computing era, I am starting to see why more and more people may eventually forego a laptop and use only two devices: a smartphone and a tablet. More...

To cloud – or not to cloud – may be an easy decision at times, depending on your preferences, the enterprise’s culture, and the applications in question. For a business, Unified Communications (UC) is ideal candidate for a first move into the cloud. However, the decision-making process could be time consuming due to the nature and importance of UC.

To me, nothing beats a handy chart which lays out the pros and cons of each approach, without biases. Gary Audin’s latest TechNote, Deploying UC Apps: CPE or Cloud, provides such a chart, comparing two obvious choices to delivering the features and benefits of UC. It’s a quick read, comparing the two alternatives side-by-side. More...

One of the biggest trends on the minds of enterprise IT executives is “Big Data,” a term coined a couple of years ago by Gartner. One of the first things to come to mind when some hear that term is “Hadoop.” Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly apparent that many folks are still not up to speed on Hadoop. In a nutshell, Hadoop is a Linux technology that supports the trend toward virtualization, allowing data and applications to span multiple virtual servers.  More...

It’s easy for tech people to lapse into a false assumption, and that is that people we talk to have a similar understanding of the technologies we’re talking about at any given time.

When you work around other IT and/or communications technology people all the time, it becomes natural to think that “everybody” knows the acronyms, the underlying technology, and essentially how all this stuff works. More...

The need for small cells – those miniature cellular access points traditionally known as femtocells – typically arises because of coverage or capacity issues within a building. Small cells are a relatively new concept that works on an operator’s licensed frequency to extend the wireless network inside a building. These cells can be installed in a number of ways to accommodate different needs. More...

A year ago, the hottest topic amongst enterprise IT executives was their cloud strategy. There was the expected give and take about whether “The Cloud” was a flash in the pan or whether it was really the vein of gold that prospectors claimed. It is pretty clear that the cloud won, hands down. More...