26 September 2007

If small businesses are anything, they're cost conscious. And many
are looking to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) to help lower the
monthly phone bill, often a big expense.

Switching to VoIP
can be especially worthwhile if your company spends a lot on
long-distance calls to far-flung employees, partners, and contacts. If
you're already connected to some of these people via a local or wide
area network (LAN/WAN), you might as well be making phone calls to them
over the pipe that you're already paying for.

Sending your
voice calls through an IP pipe along with your data communications has
another set of beneficial side effects. For one thing, your company can
use "unified messaging," which lets you manage your voice mail and
e-mail in the same place. You can also employ so-called "presence"
features to see the status--on cell, busy, and so on--of coworkers and contacts.