Real Life Benefits of VoIP

I was born to be a telecommunications sales engineer.  For years I commuted to an office to work...along with many other employees.  When you get right down to it...the reason I commuted to the office was that I needed access to company resources...equipment and applications that were costly...and served multiple employees...like the copier, fax machine and the office phone system. In the past...the traditional (circuit-switched) design of the phone system required that the telephone be installed on telephone wires and was located no more than about 1000 feet from the computer that ran the phone system.  But in the last few years I was able to take advantage of new packet-switched Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology.  With this technology...the phone connects to a data network and the voice goes through the Internet to get to the phone system.  There are many advantages to using this technology...but removing the geographical distance limit between the phone and the phone system is one of the most important ones.  For the last few years I was able to personally benefit from VoIP.  The technology made it possible for me to work for a company that is located across the country from my home/office. And voice is not the only collaboration tool that made it possible.  Daily use of video conferencing, instant messaging, presence information, email, calendars, desktop and presentation sharing...and web access to over 30 corporate websites made it possible to work remotely and still "be tightly connected" to coworkers, customers and vendors. Remote teleworking is not right for everyone in every job...but for a self-motivated knowledge worker like myself...it is a dream come true.  Time to go home for a cup of coffee...I mean...I am going to walk upstairs to the kitchen now and pour a cup.