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Voice over Everything to change workplace comms
By Stan Beer
Friday, 11 November 2005
Within two years, voice services will be available as embedded telephony in more than half of all business IT applications, according to new research.



According to research group Gartner, most CIOs are currently unaware of the emerging trend for Voice to become embedded in IT applications in a way that is expected to fundamentally change the way voice communication is used in the workplace.

“Today we dial; tomorrow we click,” said Geoff Johnson, research vice president at Gartner. “Voice will be embedded in everything and mobility will be crucial. Calls will be made by clicking through a document or an email rather than dialling a number.”

Australia is fast emerging as a leader in the adoption of IP Telephony and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) with more than 55% of Australian businesses having either implemented or have taken steps to implement VoIP services, in comparison to just 35% of Asia Pacific companies.

“With the technology already available, voice-embedded IT applications are well on their way to becoming mainstream in Australia and the Asia Pacific region,” said Johnson. “Traditional telephony vendors such as Alcatel, Avaya, Ericsson, NEC and Nortel closely guard their existing telephony customers but they have lost significant market share to Cisco in pure IP Telephony. However, as voice becomes delivered in software rather than hardware, as in a PABX, new players such as Microsoft threaten to gazump the relationship between telephony users and network equipment providers. Voice is becoming a ‘click’ on the desktop where Microsoft has massive mindshare.”

According to Gartner, VoE will incorporate everything from voice-activated documents to voicemails in email inboxes. At the click of a button, users will be able to speak to people who are working on a jointly written document to make amendments; reply verbally to emails, or check a person’s availability. Just as instant messaging has ‘presence’ technology that allows you to see whether someone is available, busy, away from their computer or offline, so too will voice-embedded applications leverage presence.

VoE is expected to increase productivity by reducing the length of time it currently takes to make phone calls by clicking on links within IT applications without dialling, looking up numbers in a directory or having to organise conference calls. VoE will also save businesses anywhere between 15 to 30% on telephone costs.

“Business owners and CIOs need to evaluate IP telephony and prepare themselves for VoE,” advised ohnson. “They need to become aware of the way that voice is becoming embedded into their mainstream business applications such as email, ERP and voice-escorted web browsing to aid customer transactions. Similarly, IT application developers must be flexible and prepare as they will increasingly be asked to include voice in their applications.”