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The voice quality issues that have plagued the VoIP industry since its inception have, to a large extent, been resolved, thanks to enhanced network equipment and monitoring and traffic prioritization solutions. That, along with the significant cost savings VoIP offers, has led to a surge in business VoIP adoption over the past several years. In fact, AMI Partners predicts SMB spending on VoIP will grow to more than $1.5 billion in 2010.

 

Unified Communications (News - Alert) is the next iteration of VoIP, and though adoption is still limited, many UC solutions are finding themselves at the forefront of business communications transformation. While many businesses are still only learning how VoIP can help reduce costs, the integration of other components, such as unified messaging, single number access, collaboration, mobility, and more, is adding additional value to standard VoIP offerings. What UC offers is not only to cost savings of VoIP, but the business productivity benefits of the many added features and capabilities that allow mobile workers to remain productive, and allow all users to communicate more effectively with colleagues, partners, and customers.

 

That is the driving force behind Unified Communications — and it’s becoming more evident every day given the number of PBX (News - Alert) vendors that are offering some form of UC — in fact, you’d be hard pressed to name many that do not.

 

But today, in an economic environment that is, for many businesses, rather bleak — the extreme of course being seen in the financial industry with devastation that befell former investment powerhouses Lehman Brothers (News - Alert) and Bear Stearns.

 

For a while, the technology space seemed somewhat immune to the economic crisis, but even it is now feeling the effects, and for most businesses, there has to be more of an incentive than simply improving long-term business processes. What they need is instant ROI.

 

Objectworld Communications may be in just the right position to take advantage of this trend, as it says its Objectworld (News - Alert) UC Server Standard Edition can provide a return on its SMB customers’ investments in as little as 15 days. That’s sure to cause more than a few businesses to take a hard look at the solution.

 

“With the economy slowing in the United States, a lot of our customers very rightly want to know how unified communications will deliver to them a return on their investment,” said David Levy, president and chief executive officer at Objectworld.  “With Objectworld UC Server, most customers can see a return on their investment in a couple of weeks, even faster if they have multiple fax lines, require Blackberry support, or need to support a number of branch offices or teleworkers.”

 

Among the key selling points is that SMBs will be able to leverage their existing technology instead of having to replace their existing PBXs, endpoints, and other communications hardware. They have the option of deploying a new IP PBX, but they can also connect the Objectworld solution to their legacy systems, saving significant capital expense and deployment time.

 

With Objectworld UC Server, SMBs receive, in a single bundled solution, unified messaging, simplified Windows-based administration capabilities, faxing, point and click call control, support for mobile and remote users, and more — all easily integrated into an existing communications infrastructure.

 

So, in addition to the valuable workforce productivity and overall responsiveness increases induced by UC solutions, solutions like Objectworld UC Server offer what may well be the key to their ability to thrive in this dismal economy. Of course, if you consider that Objectworld says its solution costs about 7 cents per user per day, it’s not hard to imagine a return in as little as two weeks. (For more on Objectworld’s pricing model and the UC world in general, check out David Levy’s IT Telephony blog on TMCnet.)

 

As an example, Objectworld says a 100-seat business will pay between $10,000 and $15,000 for its Objectworld UC Server Standard Edition, including everything needed to integrate with an existing system, and dependent on the amount of professional services that are required for installation. Then, based on U.S. Bureau of Labor wage statistics, and estimated time savings from the UC solution, it claims a savings of approximately $10 per day per employee — thus a 15-day complete return on the investment.

 

Based on this data, the investment in Unified Communications seems an obvious choice, even in these trying times. Of course, even with these ROI calculations, the success of the investment is dependent on business performance. A solution from Objectworld or any other vendor is dependent on the ability of employees to capitalize on their opportunities, but by providing the best set of tools, SMBs can maximize their potential for success and ensure that, at worst, they make it through this economic crisis, and, at best, increase their revenues.