<p>Media releases are provided as is and have not been edited or checked for accuracy. Any queries should be directed to the company issuing the release.</p><p>The communications requirements of most businesses now extend well beyond telephony. They embrace email, instant messaging, voicemail, video conferencing and 'presence'. Ideally every one is integrated with the others to create a suite of unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) tools. As businesses contemplate on implementing or upgrading their facilities, they are increasingly facing the question: to cloud, or not to cloud?</p><p>Hosted IP telephony services have been around since well before the term 'cloud computing' became popular. M5 Networks was founded in 2002. According to Wikipedia, 'cloud computing' became popular only after Amazon introduced the Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006.</p><p>Apart from a whole gamut of applications and services that are now 'cloud-based,' cloud computing has greatly expanded its role in communications with almost every UC&C function now available from the cloud. That doesn't mean that a cloud-based option is automatically the appropriate choice, but in most cases the arguments in favour of cloud are compelling.</p><p><a href="http://www.cmo.com.au/mediareleases/17553/the-case-for-clouding-unified-communications/">Keep reading...</a></p>