Memphis Communications Corporation: MCC Telecom Solutions

Friday, 18 July 2014

More than Meets the Ear - MCC Telecom Solutions

When a church looks at technology, it doesn’t necessarily stop being a house of worship but it does begin to take on the coolly analytic characteristics of any business looking to make a major capital acquisition. As objective as those per lustrations may be, they are nonetheless vulnerable to perceptual biases that can color the process. And that’s what lies behind Kevin Knox’s initial assessment of a Bose Room Match PA system that was under consideration at the Church of Apostles, an evangelical mega church in Atlanta’s Buck head neighborhood, where Knox is the media and communications coordinator. “I remember thinking, ‘Bose-they make great headphones for when you’re on an airplane but you’re not putting them in my sanctuary,’” Knox recalls. “I just didn’t associate the Bose brand with professional products.

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That’s an issue the Boston-area company has faced since it entered the professional audio sphere in the 1990s. It’s L1 portable PA system, introduced in 2003, achieved a relatively small but avid following among touring musicians, in large part for its seeming impervious feedback problems.

The Room Match, which was introduced in 2011, took Bose to another level, putting up against the more familiar brand names in large-scale house sound systems. The product, which is actually a series of modules with highly specific dispersion patterns that lets sound-system singers couple together combinations that are very specifically tailored to each space’s scale and nuance, has been making steady inroads in houses of worship and elsewhere, tough it’s ironically still dogged by Bose’s more well-known success with compact home stereo system, interesting and expensive desktop radios and the noise-cancelling headphones that initially came to Knox’s mind when he first encountered the Room Match system at a WFX event in 2012.

Then, he heard the system. “It had a real warmth that you don’t usually get with a big PA system,” he says. “It felt like it was right there in the room with you. I got the sense that it would be able to give us what we really needed: good intelligibility in the mid-range and full-range sound for music.”

Knox and some his colleagues at the church – he has a 14-person tech team comprised of local AV professionals of various specialties, who are paid staffers – listened to the Room Match system in a variety of environments, including some nightclubs. His acceptance of the Room Match, intended to replace an aging EAW point-source system in the church’s 12 year old 2,450-seat sanctuary, was more a process than an epiphany, and he found some of his initial reservations shared even by the AV integrator they chose to help design and install the new sound system, Nashville, TN based CTS. “They were pretty cautious about it at first, too, like everyone else was,” Knox says of CTS, which was brought on board the project after the church decided in favor of the Room Match system.

Looking for a Bose Room Match Solution for your organization, contact MCC’s Audio Visual Solutions Division today to learn more!

- See more at: http://memphiscommunications.net/blog/?p=1678#sthash.CQP2AZAy.dpuf

For more details please contact us at:

Memphis Communications Corporation

4771 Summer Ave

Memphis, TN 38122

Tel: 901.725.9271

Fax: 901.272.3577

Toll Free: 866.805.5893

Service and Supplies: 901.257.2500

Email: sales@memphiscommunications.net

Website: http://www.memphiscommunications.net

Tuesday, 15 July 2014

Three Reasons Why VoIP is the Right Choice for You – MCC Telecom Solutions

1. You need to cut costs

This is the main driver for SMBs, and in some cases, the only one. All SMBs want to reduce costs, but circumstances may dictate the need to do so. When your viability is on the line, management will look for every avenue. VoIP’s economic advantages are well known enough now that telephony will be a quick target for generating quick savings. In these cases, saving money could trump everything, including a phone system that still works perfectly well.

For businesses that are truly looking for alternatives to costly legacy service, this will usually be the right move. Keep in mind, however, there are hidden costs associated with VoIP, so the savings that come will be somewhat offset by these. Overall, however, you should be able to generate enough cost savings to make this move worthwhile.

Remember, there are two main areas where you’ll reduce costs by going to VoIP. First is for the service itself, which will be less costly in many ways than legacy telephony from your incumbent provider. Second is the phone system, and if you’re using a legacy PBX now, a system refresh would absolutely cost less money. There is also a savings associated with converging your voice and data networks, but that’s more difficult to quantify, especially if a quick decision on cost-cutting needs to be made.

2. Your phone system needs replacing

This defines scenarios where sticking with the status quo is not an option. For a variety of reasons, your phone system will eventually reach a point where it cannot meet your needs, and a change is in order. You may still feel attached to that phone system, especially if it has served you well and your employees are very comfortable with it. Replacing it with the same type of system is a possibility, as there are always sources out there on the secondary market.

Sticking with legacy may be the least disruptive option, but it’s not really a good business investment. The role of telephony is changing, and there are many viable paths to follow. Replacing your phone system actually presents a golden opportunity to make a break with the past and move along one of those paths.

In the context of this article, the path you’ll likely choose is to replace legacy telephony with IP telephony. You may see no reason to do telephony any differently, but you do want to reduce your costs. Going to VoIP allows you to replicate what you had with legacy, and if that’s the vision you have in mind, this will be a good plan.

3. You want a better way to do telephony

The above two scenarios are triggered by events that necessitate a change, but this is another driver for moving to VoIP. Your business may be doing well, and you’re not facing the incessant pressure to reduce costs. Furthermore, your legacy phone system may be holding up nicely, so day-to-day telephony reliability is not an issue.

On a broader plane, if your business is in a growth mode, and/or there’s a strategic imperative to create more competitive differentiation, there is a higher-order driver for VoIP. In particular, your business sees technology as an enabler for these objectives, and if so, VoIP will be a prime candidate for adoption.

SMBs tend to move slowly with new technologies, so even though Unified Communications delivers more powerful benefits, you’re probably not ready yet for such a big leap forward. After all, VoIP is new for your business, and there are lots of reasons to have reservations about its capabilities. To minimize your technology adoption risk, however, VoIP is a pretty safe bet if you choose the right partners.

Once that risk obstacle is crossed, you also know that VoIP is a better way to do telephony – not just for economics, but new features that speak to your strategic objectives. For now, though, the tactical benefit of making telephony better is reason enough to adopt VoIP.

To learn more contact MCC’s Telecom Solutions Division today!

- See more at: http://www.memphiscommunications.net/blog/#sthash.vgvmNBcD.dpuf