The IT industry has been driving down the fast lane for the past couple of years which led to the emergence of some technology terms; the term convergence is almost the prevailing approach in today’s modern networks.

Convergence means that two or more opposites or separate entities meet and become unified or for simplicity, they become one.  In our case the converging entities are rock-solid players forming the basis of each and every day’s communications methods namely voice/speech, data, and video, these are called enterprise services.

In the old days, each enterprise maintained two or more network setup, the following lists several networks that had to be installed, operated, and maintained in a separate manner:

1. Voice Network: based on traditional TDM circuit-switched PABX to connect all enterprise employees in the same location, which requires a separate cabling infrastructure. For enterprises with multiple local/global locations, Recurring costs for local or national locations could be tolerated, as for global connectivity recurring costs; this was truly a financial headache for global operations enterprises.

2. Data Network: in the same manner, enterprise data networks also have their separate cabling infrastructure plus using separate leased lines to connect local and global sites and not to mention internet connectivity as well. The administration team for a data infrastructure has nothing to do with voice; simply because there is nothing common in between from the infrastructure point of view.

3. Video Network: just like any other enterprise application, video networks or video teleconferencing – VTC, has its own costly standalone infrastructure since video requires more bandwidth over expensive technologies that do guarantee QoS like ATM, ISDN, and E1/T1 lines. This made enterprises run islands of infrastructure for different purposes.

The industry’s challenge was to make these applications converge to use the same unified infrastructure for the following reasons:

1. Network consolidation

2. Lower cost of ownership

3. Enhanced productivity

4. Proactive customer engagement

Now voice and video are, not only, transported over IP networks, but also new features have been developed that offered application users new services that were unreachable in the old days. Therefore; voice, video, and data share not only the same physical infrastructure, but also they run using the same protocol (IP). Now it is easy to maintain a single cabling and network equipment infrastructure for all services and those emerging in the future. BTC Networks has been following closely on Convergence since the dawn of the technology, and now with years of experience as our basis and a market share leader in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia & the Middle East, BTC’s strategy is to push forward convergence as the solid communications ground for new & evolving enterprises whatever their size.