Virtual collaboration is how people do business around the world today. From customer

interactions to internal meetings and training, unified communications plays a part.

Collaboration vehicles vary greatly, from online collaboration toolkits like WebEx™ and

Microsoft Lync® or Skype™ to dedicated services and appliances by Vidyo® or Cisco® or

standard IP services for telephone (VoIP) and video.

For environments where conference phones and PC audio applications must both be

supported, often two units take up table space: a VoIP conference phone, and a USB audio

device. The ability to bridge VoIP and USB calls easily in one unit has many benefits,

including eliminating the requirement of two units on the table (one for USB telephone and

PC audio applications and one for IP telephone) and the reduction in the footprint taken up

by both devices. This saves money and allows for a mixed VoIP and BYOD environment,

which is the reality of how things work today. Users have come to expect support for online

collaboration applications such as Skype™, Microsoft Lync®, Cisco Jabber®, WebEx™ etc.;

support for softphone applications (a software program for making telephone calls over

the Internet using a PC, rather than using dedicated hardware); and compatibility with

major telephony environments (on-premise or cloud-based IP PBX).