Storage, and IP Private Branch Exchanges In this chapter: Introduction What Is a LAN? Switches, Media, and Protocols in LANs IP PBXs-Voice, Video, and Unified Communications IP Telephony-Converting Voice Signals to Digital Data Unified Communications, Contact Centers, and Video Conferencing Appendix INTRODUCTION IT management is in a race to keep up with growing demand for capacity on local area networks (LANs) and storage systems. The growth in the amount of traffic on LANs that results in congestion is due to the growing number of employees Accessing data that is in the cloud Uploading data to the cloud Downloading data from the Internet Holding videoconferences with remote and local colleagues Using collaboration software to share and edit documents related to joint projects The above factors add to the increasing volume of data traversing the LANs. In addition to more voice, data, and video transmitted on LANs, there are requirements for additional capacity on storage systems. Some of the needs for additional storage can be attributed to the fact that regulations in certain industries require businesses to save data for 3 or www.TechnicalPDF.com more years. Examples of industries with retention requirements include Medical device and pharmaceutical companies Hospitals Retailing Financial firms Government agencies Even organizations without as many requirements to retain data are finding it necessary to add more storage space for data related to customer information, product specifications, research projects, and employee data. In addition, the cost for storage is decreasing, which allows organizations to store more data. Data centers are centralized locations for housing software applications. Because of the growing dependence on the cloud to store and manage applications, enterprise data centers are shrinking in physical size. Placing applications in the cloud takes the burden of monitoring, patching, and upgrading applications away from staff in corporate data centers. It additionally reduces the load on or