The Winner's Circle

When judging your opportunity in converged communications, here are some signs that you are looking at a winner:

Mobility. Today’s networks are evolving heavily toward mobility. Whether they are high-speed or low-speed, they enable users the freedom to move within the network wirelessly and, increasingly between networks, such as VoWi- Fi to cellular, cellular to landline, or landline to VoWi-Fi.

Presence. A sister to mobility, presence enables others to find you wherever you are and to engage you at that point in an IM session, Web-conference, audio call, etc.

Quality. QoS, to be more accurate, is the obsession of converged networks that are now being asked to support not only data, but latency-sensitive voice, video and TV services as well as mission-critical building and safety controls.

Neutrality. With surprising frequency, neutral third parties - colos, interconnection facilities, switch partitioners, exchanges, peering fabrics, clearinghouses - are coming onto the scene to provide the glue between converging networks and disciplines with a many-to-oneto- many-model, supplanting less efficient bilateral systems.

Security. Finally, but most importantly, security of converged network facilities is evermore important as the vulnerabilities of IP-based networks are well-known and must be fortified to ensure benefits are realized.