Business benefits of technology, don't get weighed down with acronyms

14/10/10By Paul Higgins, head of marketing at Opal, the UK's leading provider of next generation communications technology for business.For small business owners, over-use of technical jargon from IT and technology suppliers can be a real annoyance with difficult-to-understand terminology commonplace. However, more than just an inconvenience, our new research has revealed that vendors using confusing jargon can in fact be quite damaging with 79% of owner managers admitting having made a bad decision as a direct result of this, and 71% believing its use has increased in the last five years.With this in mind, what's important is for owner-mangers to focus...

...on the business benefits of technology, rather than getting weighed down with acronyms. Some of the most common 'confusing' technical terms identified in the research in IT and telecoms emerged as Next Generation Network, "Ethernet" and "VoIP", which is alarming, given the huge business benefits these technologies bring.More than 60% of people didn't know what a Next Generation Network is. In simple terms this is a type of communication network based on high-speed, optical fibre, meaning all sorts of data, including voice and broadband, can be carried down the same line. It is a step on from the type of legacy network which traditionally just carry telephone calls; think of it like having a motorway lane all to yourself. The benefits of a Next Generation Network are far reaching; you can get high performance with a low cost base, and you can constantly build on extra features to your network, ensuring it will never go out of date.Meanwhile, more than half of respondents admitted to not understanding VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which is the ability to carry a voice call over your broadband connection. Skype is a mainstream consumer example of this, but there are now highly... continued on page two >

Delegates and exhibitors at Fresh Business Thinking LIVE! give feedback from the one day event, which covers all the essentials that will enable you to grow or improve your business. Oct '10