IP Telephony

The legacy circuit-switched business phone system, called a PBX, was a big box in a big room. This led to decentralized implementations where every location needed its own system. Over time, as businesses expanded, incompatible versions, systems or even vendors were installed at sites. This led to complexity that served different functionality to various users, prohibited interoperability, and created a support nightmare.

The emergence of IP telephony issued in the era of centralized call processing across the ubiquitous IP network, allowing for universal features across all sites and users. Voice and data convergence offers a single operational and support environment, reducing complexity and cost while enhancing features and productivity.

 

At the heart of the Cisco IP telephony system is Cisco’s Unified Communications Manager (formerly CallManager), a software-based call processing application. Cisco Unified Communications Manager software extends enterprise telephony features and capabilities to IP phones, media processing devices, VoIP gateways, and other multimedia applications. Additional data, voice, and video services such as unified messaging , multimedia conferencing collaborative contact centers  and interactive multimedia response systems interact with the IP telephony solution through Cisco Unified Communications Manager's open telephony application programming interfaces (APIs).

 

Cisco IP Phones are a full range of intelligent communication devices designed to take advantage of the power of your data network, while providing the convenience and ease-of-use you've come to expect from your business phone. In the IP environment, each phone has an Ethernet connection. IP phones provide the functionality you expect to receive from a traditional telephone, as well as more complicated features, such as the ability to access World Wide Web sites. Typical user instruments include Cisco IP Phones and Cisco IP SoftPhones.