I’ve talked about potential pros of VoIP as it pertains to direct cost savings to the enterprise. There are some hidden benefits of VoIP as well, these don’t get the same attention or get measured like the other well known features.

Since VoIP works over the same infrastructure as your data traffic, this makes it very easy for VoIP systems to be integrated with your data systems. This is becoming more apparent as software like Microsoft’s Exchange 2007 gets released with direct unified communication hooks.

What this means to you is, you can easily integrate your voice and data to have one point of contact for your users. All email, faxes and voicemails come into the same universal inbox, this inbox gets backed up and is accessible via proprietary client (Outlook), web (OWA) or handheld.

Imagine the cost savings, your field and office personnel all use the same method of getting access to all forms of communication. Learning curves get flattened quickly, user productivity rises and users are happier while their frustration levels drop.

Most VoIP systems will offer such integration out of the box with little configuration. A big player, as I mentioned in an earlier article, is Microsoft. Microsoft’s strategy is to leave your phone system as it is and still enable VoIP and Unified Communications via software; Moto – VOIP as you are. Microsoft has already signed up vendor partners like Nortel, D-Link and a few others