Ketchum Integration was founded in 1999, as a pure provider of IP-based telephone systems, anticipating the immense paradigm shift occurring in the enterprise communication marketplace. The emergence of IP as a standard communications protocol has made the convergence of telephony services into the data network unavoidable. This "convergence" provided immense cost savings and productivity benefits to those deploying it. IP telephony growth accelerated to unprecedented levels through 2004, according to the market research firm of The Phillips Group-Infotech. Their projection at that time in 99 was that nearly 90% of businesses would begin switching from conventional telephone systems to IP telephony over their LANs and WANs by 2004.
