subject: Telephone Engineers Are Your New It Guys [print this page] 10 years ago, a business telephone system was a pretty simple thing. One phone per desk; all looped into some kind of switchboard. Maybe a receptionist. And that was it. These days, business phone systems are immensely convoluted. They can do anything and be anything. Which is why the telephone engineers that fit and maintain them are now fully qualified IT people: and quite likely to end up providing technological backup for most IT systems running in the company.
A modern business telephone system, from an equipment angle, is still very simple. Now, it requires: one phone per desk, plus a computer network. And that is it.
The telephone is hooked into the computer network via a modem. A modem, of course, is a phone line, which means that the phone can work straight through the computer. And why would you want it to do that? Because the phone system the telephone engineers have just installed for you operates on a virtual switch board, which is enclosed in the existing network of your company.
Modern business phone systems are mostly software packages, which are able to convert your existing business network into a communications hub: a central place where absolutely all company communications can be logged and distributed. That means text, email, voicemail and straight phone calls the lot. No wonder modern telephone engineers need to be qualified IT guys.
See, a modern business phone system is able not only to log and transmit communications in all these forms, but to take communications in one form and transmit them in something totally other. That means that a person can send an email to someone in your company and your phone system can call that person, on his or her mobile, and read the email to them as a voice. Not only that: the person receiving the call can then answer, with his or her voice, and your phone system will transcribe that answer and email it back to the person who sent the original message. Again: no wonder modern telephone engineers are now qualified IT guys.
The theory behind all of this is very simple and very far reaching. The idea, basically, is to make all business communications talk to each other no matter where or how they originated. That allows every company to have a much more seamless line of communication open with all of its employees, all of its clients, all of its partners and all of its customers because the communications are all coming in through the same hub.
Modern telephone engineers, as a consequence of this, do a whole lot more than just jacking a phone into a wall. They set up and arrange network capabilities. They trouble shoot huge software programs. They teach their clients how to seamlessly integrate technologies from multiple devices and applications. And they do it all with the same skill and friendliness that they always used.
Hats off to the telephone engineer, then and to the new world order of business communications. Its going to be an efficient decade.
