The Cisco SONA Architectural Model in Unified Communications: A Solid Foundation for the Collaborative, Innovative Enterprise
Unified communications (UC) solutions aim to boost productivity and innovation by enabling new collaboration models and enriching traditional enterprise applications with communication capabilities. By eliminating communication and collaboration silos within critical business processes, a well-architected UC solution fulfills a vital role as a productivity and agility engine in the business. But such an ambitious objective can be achieved only if unified communications is built on a robust and open architectural framework. This paper describes how Cisco's Service-Oriented Network Architecture (SONA) provides robust, network-based services that enrich emerging, innovative composite applications, such as UC, and significantly contributing to optimal alignment between technology and business processes. This innovative architectural approach results in improved usability for end users, enhanced infrastructure manageability for IT personnel, and enterprise-class reliability in the technology infrastructure.
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Unified Communications Considerations for Enterprises
AVST's extensive experience interfacing with and supporting enterprise customers worldwide highlights several key issues for enterprise IT/Telecom teams to consider when evaluating their organizational plans for the adoption of unified communications (UC).
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Sustaining a Global Enterprise Through Unified Communications
As the trend toward a global economy accelerates, the geographically dispersed virtual enterprise is becoming more common. Increasingly, enterprises have employees at multiple sites worldwide, suppliers and partners in dozens of countries, and R&D, manufacturing and contact centers in far-flung locations.
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Testing ATAs, Gateways, VoIP PBXs, and other Signal Processing Elements in VoIP Networks Through Unified Communications
To reliably and efficiently handle voice communications, IP networks contain a myriad of signal processing devices including gateways, analog telephone adapters (ATA), and VoIP PBXs. A PSTN / IP gateway permits calls to be placed between a VoIP phone and a PSTN phone. In essence, it provides a bridge between two different network technologies - TDM and IP. An ATA is similar to a gateway but generally handles a few lines common to a home or small office application. A VoIP PBX may have PSTN connectivity (and therefore gateway functions) or may be totally IP.

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Unified Communications and Collaboration
Reaping the benefits of connecting your team
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Is Unified Communications the Next Stage of Mobility?
While mobility applications are rapidly being deployed around the world, Unified Communications (UC) is still in its early-adoption stage. Most analysts and vendors define UC as the integration of numerous applications including presence, collaboration, conferencing, unified messaging, contact center and mobility. However, UC should be thought of in business terms as a technological advance that answers business needs. Unlike UC, mobility is not strictly an application, and it is far more than just a subset of UC. Rather, it is a catalyst that leverages the value of all UC applications. Thus, when making a business case for UC, applications that involve mobility- such as softphones, smartphones, fixed-wireless dual-mobility devices and mobility clients-usually contribute the most significant ROI.
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