When determining which communication platform is best suited to a particular business's need, when does convergence make sense? In other words, when should a business consider a KTS (Key Telephone System) like Nortel Norstar versus a converged IP telephony solution like the award-winning Nortel Business Communications Manager (BCM)?
At the heart of convergence and IP telephony are two fundamental questions:

• How can it help the business today?
• What opportunities can it create tomorrow?

These questions can be answered by closely examining some of the more fundamental needs of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with respect to communications. These include core elements such as reliability and security, contact center capabilities and manageability, and other critical areas such as employee mobility, growth plans, investment protection and the specific dynamics of an organization’s business model.

Core communication requirements
First, let's examine some of the fundamental communications needs in the SMB and branch office environment marketplace — reliability and security. As Norstar is a digital solution (non-IP based), security is inherent in the overall design, which is further complemented with additional security features such as user-defined passwords to control access. Norstar's reliability has also been proven over its rich history, with an industry leading reliability rating and unprecedented market longevity.

BCM continues this tradition of reliability for small and medium businesses, and even has optional redundancy features not available on Norstar (including cooling fan, power and system programming redundancy to name just a few1). BCM also has an industry-leading, layered approach to platform security, including a hardened secure platform and capabilities that stretch across secure access management, secure interfaces and secure telephony features. In addition to this, BCM has built-in firewall and denial-of-service protection capabilities — perimeter defenses to protect the internal network, computers and employees from unauthorized access or attacks. In short, BCM's extensive, world-class security features have been designed to ensure SMB customers have peace of mind knowing that their business is well protected.

The bottom line
Although there are many potential business benefits from a converged IP telephony solution, businesses need to internalize them to their specific needs — to closely examine both where they are today and where they want to be in the future.

Nortel's strategy is to offer customer choice and the flexibility to seamlessly evolve to IP telephony if and when it works for their business, while maximizing their total communications investment.

IP-based convergence can deliver significant benefits to SMBs, and is quickly becoming the communications blueprint for the future.
But the bottom line is this: convergence makes sense when it makes sense for your business. Find out more about how Nortel's communications solutions can help small and medium-sized businesses and branch offices increase employee productivity and satisfaction, streamline business operations and costs, and deliver superior customer service.