By Mark Ward BBC News Online technology correspondent

The net is driving big changes in business

But increasingly the initials most relevant to computers and the net are "I" and "P".

In this case they stand for Internet Protocol which, as you might guess, is the foundational specification for the way that the net works.

That underlying net technology is becoming the foundation for a whole range of services more usually associated with the old-fashioned phone network.

Basic bits

Before now the networks behind phones and those behind computers have been largely separate.

But IP is changing all that.

"The industry is very much focused on one protocol and that's IP," said Alex Black, strategy director at Omnetica, "it's become the de facto standard."

Moving to a wholly-IP based infrastructure is attractive because it is cheaper to run one network rather than two.

But, said Mr Black, few people seem to realise that it can do much more than save a company money, said Mr Black.

A survey of businesses carried out for Omnetica found that although 94% of those questioned were carrying out projects to merge phone and data networks, only 41% grasped what this would let them do.

Mr Black said firms should not stop with simple cost saving because IP's potential for making changes is much greater than that.

Too many times, said Mr Black, firms become enchanted by technology and forget to think deeply about the opportunities it offers.

Robert Vangstad, from IP messaging firm Mobeon, said putting a company's communication systems, including e-mail, fax, voicemail as well as fixed and mobile phones, on a unified infrastructure can usher in radical changes.

IP could be businesses' flexible friend

"We're seeing the move to a more personalised message store that can store all different kinds of content," said Mr Vangstad, "it should not matter whether it's SMS, voice mail or e-mail."

Giving every employee a mailbox where all their messages go reduces the overhead of managing different messaging systems, said Mr Vangstad.

They no longer carry round several separate message systems on laptop, phone and perhaps PDA, they have one place to go that can be quizzed by any device.

The fact that the message box is sitting on a server also means firms can do much more with it.

For instance, said Mr Vangstad, the message stores can be customised to give different responses to different people and the messages they leave or send.

The cost of setting up these individual message boxes was falling rapidly, said Mr Vangstad.

In 2001, said Mr Vangstad, firms would pay up to $20 per user per mailbox. Now, he said, costs have dropped to about $2 per person per mailbox.

This network unity also makes it easier for employees to work together rather than just leave messages for each other.

Meet and greet

Collaborating via anything other than audio or video conferencing was difficult on the old-fashioned telephone network, said Tony Gasson, spokesman for Webex.

Soon your work calls will follow you around

Not least, he said, because video conferencing had to be done via special, and costly, suites and was always something of an occasion.

By contrast, he said, web-based meetings were much more informal and could be set up on an ad hoc basis.

"Anyone can do this," he said, "all you need is a web browser, internet connection and telephone and a web cam if you want to do the video part."

But, he said, when staff are given easier tools to collaborate the part they tend to drop is the moving pictures.

Far more effective, he said, was the ability to share and work on documents with colleagues spread around a firm.

"You could be doing what ifs on a spreadsheet as if you were standing next to each other," he said.

Some Webex clients were starting to use web meetings for training because it gave them the opportunity to split people into smaller groups that matched the speed they learned.

Some firms were putting experts at the end of a web meeting to give staff instant access to experts that were otherwise hard to track down.