Coping in a New Era of Telecom.

The article discusses a report released by Forrester entitled "The Four Stages of Enterprise Managed IP Communications." It was found that the report was based on a survey of European service providers that are trying to help large enterprises integrate communications applications such as basic and advanced telephony, audioconferencing, video, voicemail, and unified messaging, into a common infrastructure and operational framework. According to Forrester, such convergence will be enabled by innovations such as service-oriented communication applications and higher-capacity IP networks. The four stages according to Forrester is visibility, transformation, end-to-end service management and self-service.