When thinking about the education market, it's easy to envision a lab full of graduate students, building "the next Google" in their labs - tirelessly coding and tweaking their invention for the masses.  Often these young fresh minds develop incredible new technologies (including much of our communications infrastructure we use every day).  However, the reality of communications infrastructure within education is often very different.  Most educational institutions are strapped for cash, being sensitive to spend the public or private funding very carefully.  It's not uncommon to find schools and universities still using 20 year old telephone equipment and beige wall phones in the class rooms.

Meanwhile, much has changed since that beige telephone was installed.  Email, instant messaging, and Unified Communications (based on SIP) have come along - improving efficiency and mobility to the hard working teaching, operations and administration staff.  To-date, implementing Unified Communications meant working with one-size-fits-all UC systems from the incumbent equipment makers that are extremely costly and frankly not well suited to the education market. 

Can educational institutions adopt Unified Communications and be careful stewards of the funding?

I'll be addressing this and many other questions during a joint webinar titled "Experience Unified Communications Made for EDU by EDU" hosted by eZuce, Ronco Communications and AudioCodes on Thursday, December 9th at 10 AM ET.   To learn more about this event and register, visit the Information and Registration Page.