UnITy – the convergence of data and voice

Since the invention of the corporate telephone system, phone services have always been the domain of the mysterious “Voice Guy”.

The Voice Guy would come to your office to do MACs (moves, adds, changes).  He would float into your office with a BIX tool, wire cutters, and maybe even a red, funny looking telephone hanging off his tool belt (don’t laugh – it’s called a butt set). You’d point to where you want a new phone to be installed, and voila, it would get setup.  Here’s the bill, have a great day.

You’d cringe, both at the cost of the service call, as well as the cost of the proprietary digital phone set, with medieval options that needed a reference book to explain the reference guide that came with it.  If you were lucky, you’d know how to get your voicemail, delete them…and that’s about it.  Setting up ring groups? Uh…call the Voice Guy.  Need to forward calls from your extension to your mobile phone? Uh….call the Voice Guy.   Need to get your office voicemails on your BlackBerry when you’re on the road? Uh…don’t bother calling the Voice Guy – it can’t be done.

With the invention of VoIP, the secretive, mysterious world of voice became much less mysterious. Now, IT professionals (“Data Guys”) found themselves capable of understanding and integrating voice services into the data networks that they were supporting.  But there was still one problem – most of the big players in the VoIP corporate phone system arena (Cisco, 3COM, Avaya, Nortel) were using proprietary protocols for the voice communications and proprietary (i.e. expensive) handsets.  Some of them were trying to do all these advanced functions using their old PBX platform.  Sound familiar?  You got it – same old game.  Need a MAC done?  Call the Next Generation Voice Guy.  Uggh.

Then came SIP – session initiation protocol.  The TCP/IP of voice communications.  Suddenly the game completely changed.  The Data Guys were suddenly empowered to implement IP-based phone systems without having to interact with the dreaded Voice Guy.  Advanced features became a breeze – voicemail to email, Microsoft Outlook integration, ring groups, integrated voice recordings – the world of voice became a subset of the data world. UnITy was achieved: the amalgamation of voice and data service under the IT realm of responsibility.  Technology Ying Yang.