Partners
The UC Business Opportunity
Historically, the decision for a new business phone system was made by the telecom manager who placed a significant emphasis on the features on a desktop phone. Proprietary PBX systems were simply accepted as a "necessary evil" as a tradeoff to have a "reliable" system. Forklift upgrades were considered a cost of doing business. Today, communications decisions are made by IT managers. Most understand that the communications industry is finally catching up with the computing industry, and is shifting from a proprietary hardware to a software centric model.
Interestingly, most VoIP system manufacturers have come from a hardware background and still deliver features on proprietary hardware devices. Just as most o f the former powerhouse proprietary computer manufacturers have gone out of business, the proprietary hardware-based phone system manufacturers are now facing the same fate. Who would of thought, 5 years ago, that Avaya would have to be taken private in an attempt to stave off mounting losses or that Nortel would be sold for pennies on the dollar in bankruptcy court? In the coming months and years we'll see many other once "high flying" manufacturers stumble down this same path.
That's because with today's powerful computer servers, system redundancy and virtualization, proprietary telephony hardware is no longer required. The next generation of Voice over IP and, now, Unified Communications solutions are designed to leverage the advances in computing technology to deliver highly scalable, powerful and robust solutions - without a dependency on proprietary hardware. This distinction becomes even more important with the advent of Unified Communications. It's virtually impossible for these IT departments to integrate their various disparate hardware devices and communications silos into a single "Unified Communications" platform.
As the Gartner Group has stated in their most recent Unified Communications report, "Some (UC) solutions are intended primarily to enhance and operate within their own specific environments, and while these solutions do work with third parties, their interoperation is often limited. Users should be aware that some products that are labeled as "unified" cannot be integrated with other vendor products into a full portfolio. These mislabeled products are capable of being used only in a stand-alone and nonintegrated manner. Other products are clearly designed to interoperate in multiple environments, thus are more flexible."
Seeing the market headed in this direction AltiGen developed the MaxCommunications Server (MaxCS) as a completely software-based Unified Communications solution. The MaxCS distributed architecture leverages computing technology including powerful Intel processors, blade servers and virtualization under VMware. With native SIP integration to both Microsoft Exchange Server 2007/2010 and Office Communications Server 2007, MaxCS also enhances Microsoft UC solutions. With industry leading all software VoIP, Call Center and Mobility solutions, AltiGen has a solution for virtually every business.
Having the ability to leverage the paradigm shift from proprietary hardware to software-based Unified Communications, harnessing the power of today's computing technologies, and enhancing Microsoft's UC offerings puts AltiGen at the forefront of this latest "communications revolution". If you're looking to drive your business forward with a forward thinking organization, which doesn't lock you and your customers into proprietary hardware, AltiGen may be just what you've been looking for.
