Did you know that Unified Communications(UC) helps protect you from disaster? For most businesses, disaster preparedness is expensive and complicated. Business owners often purchase backup generators, extra trunk lines from their telephone company and develop emergency procedures. Then they assign task forces, hold strategy sessions, conduct studies and propose safeguards and processes that ultimately just sit on the shelf. The effort spent to prepare for disasters is costly, requiring expertise and labor that many companies simply cannot afford. Therefore, sometimes they just take their chances and hope for the best.

But disasters will and do occur. Many businesses have taken steps to ensure that their data is secure and that they can recover quickly from emergency situations, but what about the customers who continue to call for support or to place orders, unaware that disaster has struck? How will communication take place if the building suffers a power outage due to natural disaster like a hurricane or severe winter storm? With traditional communication systems, those phone calls are unanswered and day to day business comes to a halt.

Fortunately, technology has presented a safety net for companies that choose to take the next step with IP communications, conducting their business more efficiently and at a much lower cost. The advantages generally cited about VoIP include the readily apparent cost effectiveness and productivity gains. It is important to note, however, that in addition to these very real benefits, VoIP opens the door to a more flexible, disaster-resistant way to do business. With VoIP deployed, it is convenient and easy to work in a "virtual office" anywhere there is an Internet connection. Employees can move their SIP-enabled phones to their homes or anywhere there is Internet access, plug into a LAN, conduct business as usual and then to anyone that calls it appears that they are "in the office." With VoIP, customers need not know that the "real" office is flooded or burned to the ground. When they call, they are immediately connected and business runs smoothly.

In addition to the business continuity provided by a well designed robust network, add SIP Trunking to the mix and data converges with voice communication, traversing the Internet as data packets securely and confidentially. Businesses can operate in any location that has Internet access, providing flexibility and continuity during disaster recovery. They use Unified Communications as a safeguard against disaster as well as a productivity enhancement; not just more "bells and whistles." When properly deployed, employees with a broadband Internet connection can share files and make and receive calls using the same tools that are available in their "real" office, and they can perform these functions from virtually anywhere.

Taking advantage of the flexibility of geographic distribution offered through SIP Trunking is another feature that can help protect business during emergency situations. In traditional business environments, data is stored in one location. Many businesses have backup files at a remote location, but even with that kind of precautionary step it takes time to retrieve and restore the data to bring it current after a disaster. SIP Trunking enables data transport and storage to and from multiple locations, eliminating the vulnerability that centralized data storage brings. This adds one more layer of protection against disaster and speeds up business processes through load balancing by distributing data across the network.