Telecom Professionals.(telecommunications enters mainstream IT) (Technology Information)

Telecommunications is making its way into the mainstream IT world

Telecommunications, once a poor cousin of IT, is rapidly becoming a strategic issue within IT organizations.

"The communications paths are starting to merge," says one IT director. "When it gets to the destination, you still have the telephony people dealing with telephony and the data people dealing with data. But the pipe in between is shared."

Small and mid-size companies seem to be moving fastest toward integration.

"In most of the big companies, there's still a definite differentiation between voice and data," says one recruiter.

However, although a fair number of network …