Network World Podcast about Unified Communications

Mitchell Ashley called me last week to talk about Unified Communications and the work my company is doing with Microsoft’s Office Communications Server 2007 R2.  Mitchell has put the conversation up as a podcast on the Network World website at http://www.networkworld.com/podcasts/com/2009/012209com-uc.html  I’ve enjoyed reading Mitchell’s Converging Network blog since I discovered it last year, so it was a real pleasure to be the subject of one his posts.

We talked a lot about what it’s like as a user to have true unified communications and how much easier it makes my life.  One of the big changes is we’ve cut our conference call expenses by $3,000 a month just by hosting the calls ourselves.  During the call I mentioned that my part of the conversation was all over VoIP using SIP trunks from Bandwidth.com connected to our Microsoft Office Communications Server R2.  I was using a Polycom CX700 aka Tanjay phone plugged into our Ethernet network.  Mitchell was using Skype, so we may have not been using any copper phone lines anywhere in the connection.  The quality was great.

We’ve come a long way from the two-line phone and answering machine that Jim and I bought at Target when we started the company!

 

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