May 21, 2009 at 15:26UC in the service of small and medium-sized businesses
Continuing the review of Unified communications, I pondered for a long time how, what and in what sequence to write. In the previous post on our blog, there were various comments about what it would be interesting to read about, starting from how to get a DID and ending with an analysis of various offers from the world's largest UC service providers: Cisco, Microsoft, Avaya, etc. It is for this, the most correct decision, that he will write sequentially about one and the other.
This entry will be down to people, in it I will talk about what business owners (start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses) can get right now, how to use it and what are the advantages. It is important to understand that “start-ups” and small business owners are completely ordinary people, no different from “non-owners” of a business (except perhaps their legal status), because ordinary individuals can use all the advantages of VoIP telephony.
So let's go.
In general, for any organization, the issue of office telephony is quite acute, because despite the total “Internetization” and the ability to solve almost any issue using only email or IM (icq, jabber, skype, etc.), many are still adherents “Classical methods” of resolving issues, namely, a landline telephone, fax, courier services. Of course, I’m sleeping and I see a world without bureaucracy, when any document can be confirmed by electronic signature and there is absolutely no need to use paper, but unfortunately in real life everything is different, and there are only one two examples in the world when a company completely refuses to paper workflow.
Nevertheless, an alternative to the classical technology of switching channels has long existed and is actively used by small and medium-sized businesses. This, of course, is VoIP technology. I don’t understand the reasons why the process of switching from classic PBXs to IP-PBXs is not so widespread, it is quite possible due to the usual laziness of organizations, or maybe because of the lack of information that they have regarding VoIP communication.
Fortunately, Russia finally began a time when a huge number of young people took up their own business, possibly due to the crisis and mass layoffs, and possibly because they were tired of working for their uncle. This is not the point. The bottom line is that all these people are able and have long been solving all problems and issues using the Internet, and they, like no one else, know what IP-telephony is and how much cheaper it is, another thing that not everyone knows about the benefits that she provides. I will talk about the most interesting of them.
Many "startups" are as economical as possible about the money they spend, and save on everything from the office to the staff, being, in fact, the CEO, and accountant, and leading programmer. With all this, working at home, or constantly moving around the city. With this organization of business, a single direct number becomes a problem, because the loss of one client sometimes leads to the fact that our businessman within a month can not only invest in his business, but simply feed himself. For this reason, many players in the VoIP-telephony market provide the service "Follow me". In simple terms, it allows you to redirect an incoming call immediately and simultaneously to several phones: office (if any), home or mobile. However, all the salt is not that you can simultaneously forward the call to various numbers, and in the software features that the IP-PBX provides for fine-tuning the call forwarding. For example, you can set up call forwarding to the second mobile if the first is busy or disconnected, or set up call transfer to your partner if you are busy now, etc.
In my opinion, the most interesting “feature”. Suppose you are the owner of a small business, for example, a website development company. Your team of designers, layout designers and programmers consists of “freelancers” from all over the country, in Khabarovsk you met a talented icon designer, in Nizhny Novgorod you have a good interface designer, you have a brilliant programmer in Krasnodar, and you yourself live in St. Petersburg. And here the customer calls you with a good, but extremely unusual order. To understand how this is all realizable, you need to call each of your team to decide how much is possible, how long it will take and what price to call the customer. Of course, you can simply write “ICQ”, or use e-mail, but firstly because of the time difference, it is not known when each of your team will see a message and answer, and secondly, it’s sometimes easier to call and connect all the necessary people to the conference to immediately find out all the issues of interest. This process looks as follows:
This function, of course, is no longer possible to surprise anyone, but the benefits of using it are enormous. Firstly, if you run your business in your own apartment or small office, sometimes there is simply not enough free space for conducting paper work, and many organizations still use faxing. Secondly, buying a separate device for sending and receiving faxes is quite a costly undertaking, and at the initial stage of doing business any penny in the account. Thus, it is much easier and more convenient to keep all received faxes in electronic form.
In the last post, I already spoke about various possibilities for making long-distance and international calls, including from a mobile, using Fring and SIP account. Now I will tell you how to do this on a computer running Windows, MacOS X, and on a smartphone that supports Fring.
Since SIP clients for Windows have done quite a lot, I’ll only tell you about the X-lite client that I use on my work computer. You can download it either from the official website of the company, or from the website of our tel-me service (a little bit of PR). Depending on which company you have chosen to make calls, the settings may differ, but slightly. I’ll show you an example of our company:
this is how the program looks like right after installation,
enter the received data on your SIP account, click Ok, set up the headphones and microphone
Voila! Everything works.
With poppies, everything is a little more complicated than with Windows, but because I, being the owner of the MacBook, use IP-telephony quite actively, a solution was found. Firstly, this is the same X-Lite , which is both free and paid with advanced functionality. But most often I always have Adium (IM client for MacOS X) and Skype, which is why I didn’t really want to install another program. The solution was found in the new, yet beta version, Adium 1.4 . They introduced support for SIP accounts, which is why I personally just “write in boiling water”, because Now all the services I use (ICQ, Twitter, SIP) work under one program. The process of setting up the program is as follows:
in the Adium settings, select the “Accounts” item.
In the list of available services, select SIP / SIMPLE
We enter all the necessary settings, as usual, click "ok" and everything is ready to work
I once had an iPhone, but unfortunately he died under the pressure of a treadmill, because now I go with Nokia, I’ll show her how to set up a SIP account under Fring.
After loading Fring, you will be offered a list of services to which you can connect to, select SIP, select a service provider, if your service provider is not in the list, just click other, the only difference between them is the SIP proxy server is not specified in other
We enter all the settings and enjoy.
As you can see, everything is extremely simple and just enough minimum computer skills or phone to all adjust.
In the next article, at the request of the citizens, I will review the existing UC solutions from such "monsters" of the market as Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya. Keep for updates. Thanks to all. Your alex.
This entry will be down to people, in it I will talk about what business owners (start-ups, small and medium-sized businesses) can get right now, how to use it and what are the advantages. It is important to understand that “start-ups” and small business owners are completely ordinary people, no different from “non-owners” of a business (except perhaps their legal status), because ordinary individuals can use all the advantages of VoIP telephony.
So let's go.
In general, for any organization, the issue of office telephony is quite acute, because despite the total “Internetization” and the ability to solve almost any issue using only email or IM (icq, jabber, skype, etc.), many are still adherents “Classical methods” of resolving issues, namely, a landline telephone, fax, courier services. Of course, I’m sleeping and I see a world without bureaucracy, when any document can be confirmed by electronic signature and there is absolutely no need to use paper, but unfortunately in real life everything is different, and there are only one two examples in the world when a company completely refuses to paper workflow.
Nevertheless, an alternative to the classical technology of switching channels has long existed and is actively used by small and medium-sized businesses. This, of course, is VoIP technology. I don’t understand the reasons why the process of switching from classic PBXs to IP-PBXs is not so widespread, it is quite possible due to the usual laziness of organizations, or maybe because of the lack of information that they have regarding VoIP communication.
Fortunately, Russia finally began a time when a huge number of young people took up their own business, possibly due to the crisis and mass layoffs, and possibly because they were tired of working for their uncle. This is not the point. The bottom line is that all these people are able and have long been solving all problems and issues using the Internet, and they, like no one else, know what IP-telephony is and how much cheaper it is, another thing that not everyone knows about the benefits that she provides. I will talk about the most interesting of them.
"Follow me"
Many "startups" are as economical as possible about the money they spend, and save on everything from the office to the staff, being, in fact, the CEO, and accountant, and leading programmer. With all this, working at home, or constantly moving around the city. With this organization of business, a single direct number becomes a problem, because the loss of one client sometimes leads to the fact that our businessman within a month can not only invest in his business, but simply feed himself. For this reason, many players in the VoIP-telephony market provide the service "Follow me". In simple terms, it allows you to redirect an incoming call immediately and simultaneously to several phones: office (if any), home or mobile. However, all the salt is not that you can simultaneously forward the call to various numbers, and in the software features that the IP-PBX provides for fine-tuning the call forwarding. For example, you can set up call forwarding to the second mobile if the first is busy or disconnected, or set up call transfer to your partner if you are busy now, etc.
Partners in different cities
In my opinion, the most interesting “feature”. Suppose you are the owner of a small business, for example, a website development company. Your team of designers, layout designers and programmers consists of “freelancers” from all over the country, in Khabarovsk you met a talented icon designer, in Nizhny Novgorod you have a good interface designer, you have a brilliant programmer in Krasnodar, and you yourself live in St. Petersburg. And here the customer calls you with a good, but extremely unusual order. To understand how this is all realizable, you need to call each of your team to decide how much is possible, how long it will take and what price to call the customer. Of course, you can simply write “ICQ”, or use e-mail, but firstly because of the time difference, it is not known when each of your team will see a message and answer, and secondly, it’s sometimes easier to call and connect all the necessary people to the conference to immediately find out all the issues of interest. This process looks as follows:
Fax to e-mail
This function, of course, is no longer possible to surprise anyone, but the benefits of using it are enormous. Firstly, if you run your business in your own apartment or small office, sometimes there is simply not enough free space for conducting paper work, and many organizations still use faxing. Secondly, buying a separate device for sending and receiving faxes is quite a costly undertaking, and at the initial stage of doing business any penny in the account. Thus, it is much easier and more convenient to keep all received faxes in electronic form.
MGMN
In the last post, I already spoke about various possibilities for making long-distance and international calls, including from a mobile, using Fring and SIP account. Now I will tell you how to do this on a computer running Windows, MacOS X, and on a smartphone that supports Fring.
Windows
Since SIP clients for Windows have done quite a lot, I’ll only tell you about the X-lite client that I use on my work computer. You can download it either from the official website of the company, or from the website of our tel-me service (a little bit of PR). Depending on which company you have chosen to make calls, the settings may differ, but slightly. I’ll show you an example of our company:
this is how the program looks like right after installation,
enter the received data on your SIP account, click Ok, set up the headphones and microphone
Voila! Everything works.
MacOS x
With poppies, everything is a little more complicated than with Windows, but because I, being the owner of the MacBook, use IP-telephony quite actively, a solution was found. Firstly, this is the same X-Lite , which is both free and paid with advanced functionality. But most often I always have Adium (IM client for MacOS X) and Skype, which is why I didn’t really want to install another program. The solution was found in the new, yet beta version, Adium 1.4 . They introduced support for SIP accounts, which is why I personally just “write in boiling water”, because Now all the services I use (ICQ, Twitter, SIP) work under one program. The process of setting up the program is as follows:
in the Adium settings, select the “Accounts” item.
In the list of available services, select SIP / SIMPLE
We enter all the necessary settings, as usual, click "ok" and everything is ready to work
Smartphones and Fring
I once had an iPhone, but unfortunately he died under the pressure of a treadmill, because now I go with Nokia, I’ll show her how to set up a SIP account under Fring.
After loading Fring, you will be offered a list of services to which you can connect to, select SIP, select a service provider, if your service provider is not in the list, just click other, the only difference between them is the SIP proxy server is not specified in other
We enter all the settings and enjoy.
As you can see, everything is extremely simple and just enough minimum computer skills or phone to all adjust.
In the next article, at the request of the citizens, I will review the existing UC solutions from such "monsters" of the market as Cisco, Microsoft and Avaya. Keep for updates. Thanks to all. Your alex.