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BEYOND 'ERNESTINE':
THE EVOLUTION OF CANADIAN BUSINESS COMMUNICATIONS;
A SEABOARD DISCUSSION PAPER IN TWO PARTS |
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PART TWO
“ The Importance of Being Ernestine”; Empowerment of Small Business |
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November 2003 - IGB Grant +1 514 849 3508
& Brian Sharwood +1
416 413 9381 |
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KEY HIGHLIGHTS: |
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- IP-based, integrated voice and data systems
are about to be embraced by Canadian business; within the next 12-18
months most Communications
equipment purchased by enterprise will be IP-based. Enterprise hearts
and minds will be won, despite skepticism, conservatism, and capital
expenditure constraints, by the new functionality of IP-based
systems; Enterprise will be convinced too by the increases in employee
effectiveness and ‘contentment’ such systems will afford. Cost-Savings,
although part of the move-to-IP-mantra will be a less important factor.
- Small Businesses will be empowered – the
constraints and problems of systems’ scale that have hampered
SME abilities to compete against larger enterprise will be largely
erased by IP systems. Integrated IP-based products will put sophisticated
tools within the reach of the smallest of
firms. Thanks to the new technologies, “Size” of the firm is
less of a differentiator of capability.
- Integrated systems, systems that marry
voice, data and image, will drive revenues for equipment-providers
and for systems-integrators to new heights – as a result,
markets are about to rediscover communications growth.
- Carriers, telephone companies specifically,
will be challenged. Many traditional revenue sources that have
sustained them since the mists-of-the-beginnings-of-time, are going
to dwindle. Enterprises will not consume legacy voice-and-data
products (long distance, “800”-services, inter-exchange
data circuits, and the like) as they have in the past: The revenue
base that
those services have represented, for decades, is about to fade. Business
will still be spending though. Indeed, probably more. The enterprise communications
expenditure will shift to access, to assurance and security, to management
of services and to applications development. A large chunk of the economy,
the SME market, will begin to deploy more of their resources on communications
and communications tools.
- Carriers will need to reinvent themselves,
and their channels to market, to make certain that they participate
in the coming business communications renaissance. “Your
next call will be important to us” -- there is a risk that“ us” may
be left behind.
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