In today's highly competitive business environment, companies everywhere want to extract business advantage from every technology in the enterprise - especially customer-facing communications, such as their telephone systems. Many are looking to IP telephony to find ways to lower costs, simplify network management and use existing systems and resources while more tightly integrating business applications and customer communication with their voice and data networks. At the same time, many of these companies face the challenge of an overly complex IT environment. They seek the benefits of an integrated business system that can help them become more responsive to their customers, improve productivity, operate without interruption and secure their data and communications - without large upfront investments in time, skills or money. With IBM System i IP Telephony, you can get the business benefits and simplicity you seek from both your telephony and IT environments, with one integrated, secure and reliable solution delivered by three industry leaders, IBM, 3COM, and iTech Solutions

What is IP telephony? Simply stated, it is technology that sends voice communication over your data network using IP. This is in contrast to traditional phone systems where data and voice networks were totally separate. More companies of all sizes are replacing their traditional phone systems with IP telephony to realize both productivity benefits and infrastructure cost savings. The reasons for making the switch to IP telephony vary from company to company. However, the most common benefits can be categorized in two areas: Cost savings and business advantage. Cost savings can be realized by reducing infrastructure and operating costs because IP telephony systems have a single infrastructure across multiple offices for voice and data, and these systems are easier to manage and change with the needs of the business. In addition, companies may experience lower charges for long-distance calling and conference call hosting.

The 3Com IP Telephony solution is a comprehensive, exceptionally flexible, reliable and manageable communications system that can increase business productivity, improve customer relationships and reduce costs. The solution includes three major components: IP telephony applications suite, media gateways and SIP-based IP phones. Together they provide the components for secure, high performance voice communications, while simplifying multi-site deployment and workforce flexibility. 3Com IP Telephony has the processing capacity to support organizations of any size with the reliability and functionality of large carrier-class systems because the call control engine that drives the solution was developed originally to address the needs of carrier deployments. And, because the solution architecture offers an incremental upgrade path, companies can add sites when ready by interconnecting them via IP. In addition, new users are added easily by administrators and IP phones are made operational by simply plugging them into a network port.

3Com IP Telephony enables companies to implement a next generation, multimedia IP communications system that uses the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) SIP standard. It supports a rich set of productivity-enhancing applications while providing the phone features of a traditional phone system. The IP Telephony module, which is a component of the 3Com Convergence Applications Suite, also lets organizations migrate to an open, IP based communications system in increments that best fit business objectives. The module supports centralized administration, configuration and management that can lower installation and operating costs and optimize IT staff as the system is implemented throughout an organization. To ensure business continuity, the module offers a distributed, replicated architecture to ensure full function telephony at any site even during a WAN failure.

Contact iTech Solutions  and schedule a time when someone can come in and discuss how the 3Com System i Telephony solution can save you money, increase productivity, provide a wealth of new functions, features and benefits all with a very quick payback.  For additional information