Today businesses need reliable and secure communication tools to interact with employees, customers and business partners. Converged Communications – the convergence of voice, video and data carried over a single Internet Protocol (IP) network provides new ways for companies to connect, communicate and collaborate.

Why is Converged Communications possible now?
In today's hyper competitive global economy, the speed of business has increased dramatically — and it's often the quickest companies that win. Whether they're striving for a greater share of the marketplace, stronger customer loyalty or the next big idea, there is one thing that all organizations need to succeed: real-time collaboration.

What are the advantages of Converged Communications?
• Helps improve communication and collaboration to assist productivity and support business growth
• Enables employees to conduct business virtually anytime, anywhere
• Supports multiple types of devices to accommodate a mobile workforce and distributed operations
• Makes it easier to assemble and disassemble work groups anywhere in the world to meet the changing demands
• Enables geographically separated teams to communicate and collaborate as one team
• Integrates collaboration tools with corporate user management system, directory, e-mail and calendaring for automation
• Helps users reach the right people and resources quicker

With the new ways for companies to connect, communicate and collaborate using applications such as presence and location information, instant messaging, Web conferencing, discussion forums, desktop sharing, IP telephony using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and other real-time collaboration technologies can improve communication efficiency and speed, enable growth in productivity, faster response to customers, greater agility in capturing business opportunities and a more innovative, competitive approach. Meanwhile, managing these multiple systems can be a costly and time-consuming exercise for IT, security of business-critical information and even make it more difficult for employees to work productively. Only when you integrate these functions with a converged-communications-ready network can you start to maximize the benefits of real-time collaboration.

How does IBM help?
IBM can help you take advantage of simultaneous communications capabilities such as:
• Contact "buddy" lists with presence and location information
• Instant messaging, with click-to-chat and click-to-call function
• Group text and voice chat
• Whiteboard collaboration, enabling brainstorm sessions
• Application and desktop sharing in real time
• Co-browsing
• IP telephony
• Video, Web and audio conferencing tools designed to simplify administration

IBM Converged Communication Services - real-time collaboration can design and deploy a system that combines presence, data, and voice and video communications to enable anytime, anywhere collaboration. By deploying an integrated, converged-communications-ready network like Lotus Sametime, IBM can help you take advantage of synchronous communications capabilities. This real-time collaboration solution helps speed time to value.