The field of business IT is never short on insider jargon. Voice over IP (VoIP) and its long list of acronym-laden add-on features is a great example. While you don’t need to understand every term, you should at least learn the differences between open source and proprietary systems.

Efficient communication is urgently important to any business looking to succeed. Communication breakdowns lead to downtime and inefficiency, among other intangible expenses. Thankfully, all of that can easily be avoided with unified communications.

What is unified communications?

Unified communications (UC) allow you to manage all your communications from one architecture rather than separately.

Office 365 users received big news about what’s happening to its VoIP platform during the 2017 Ignite conference. According to Microsoft, Skype for Business will eventually be replaced by Teams -- an all-in-one collaboration platform that rivals popular tools like Slack.

VoIP phone systems have come a long way from the early days of glitchy calls and limited features. Today, they’re an integral part of small- to medium-sized businesses’ telecommunications strategies. But what exactly are they and what benefits can they bring your business?

What is VoIP?

VoIP, or Voice over Internet Protocol, is a technology that allows you to make and receive calls over the internet.

Although many companies still use traditional phones, an increasing number rely on VoIP’s (Voice over Internet Protocol) multi-functionality, which allows employees to make voice calls, conduct video-conferences, and chat. Although many scammers send fraudulent emails to extort money or steal data from businesses, new ‘vishing’ campaigns are proving to be a more efficient way to scam.

It’s very frustrating for businesses with hosted VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to experience bad call quality. Hosted VoIP is supposed to be more advantageous than traditional phone or on-premises VoIP systems, but many providers still can’t seem to guarantee landline call quality when it comes to voice calls.

Google and Microsoft have made huge strides with their communication solutions, Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business. Both products offer text, voice, and video chat, but each has unique features suited for specific businesses. To help you make a decision about which solution to install, we compare Hangouts Meet and Skype for Business features so you can see how they stack up against each other.

Communication is an integral component to any small- and medium-sized business. To ensure the success of your SMB, utilizing the right technology resources is key. Short for fifth-generation wireless systems, 5G is changing essential technology solutions like VoIP. Here are three key changes you need to look out for.

When your customers call your support hotline, they want to be connected to a helpful customer service representative, not experience another hassle. But when they get irked by your unprofessional on-hold messaging system, they can get doubly frustrated and become harder to appease.

Alexa, Amazon’s counterpart to Microsoft’s Cortana and Apple’s Siri, is an intelligent personal assistant that can perform various tasks for its ‘master.’ Based on a recently released patent, the eCommerce company is set to reveal a wireless phone system powered by this artificial intelligence (AI) technology.