In the telecom world, anything less than a 24x7 uptime becomes a matter of life and death. With the explosive rise in internet usage and the convergence of computing, wireless networking, and telecom applications using low-cost off the shelf IP technologies, the old classical networking structures are being shaken to their cores. New services such as unified messaging, fax, video and voice over IP, storage over IP will necessitate the building of high availability into these new telecom equipments.

Newer applications that have global coverage such as e-mail, e-tailing, e-commerce, e-banking etc, require continuous data availability, 24x7 uptime. The converged communications industry demands the same standards of robustness and high availability that have been taken for granted in the telecom industry for decades, the dial tone must become the web tone.