June 2010 Archives

Virtualization and unified communications have been on a collision course for the last few years. This convergence is due in large part to the fact that both of these technologies are data center oriented. Virtual appliances are increasing in popularity due to their ability to simplify the delivery of aggregated software elements. As I'll explore further, virtual appliances may be a perfect fit for unified communications in that respect.

Real-time voice and to a greater extent unified communications have undergone a tremendous shift away from proprietary hardware and to a more open architecture leveraging a common Intel-based server platform. In addition to moving away from proprietary hardware, communications vendors are taking advantage of Linux as a replacement for proprietary operating systems. The reasons for this transition are significant. By moving to a more open software-based environment communications vendors are able to provide a more flexible and scalable architecture leveraging an open API to extend communications into the line-of-business application realm.