Enterprises wake up to the business benefits of VoIP

It seems as though the term ‘IP convergence’ has been bouncing around for years. And in fact it has – but it is only in the recent past that enterprises have begun to realise the full potential and benefits of a converged infrastructure.

Because the industry has been talking about convergence for so long, the benefits of a converged voice and data infrastructure should be well known. But that doesn’t mean the path to reaching harmony between the two mediums on a single network has been an easy one for businesses to follow.

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A number of historical issues have become major obstacles and have ultimately delayed the uptake of voice and data convergence. One of the greatest and most obvious headaches is that of integrating the voice and data units of an organisation or enterprise – two divisions of the company that have traditionally led very separate lives. If this initial obstacle is overcome, you then have to face the fact that actually running high quality and very reliable voice services over data is quite difficult.

But with recent developments in technology and a more mature approach to its implementation, the benefits have been seen to far outweigh the obstacles in a converged business infrastructure, delivering reduced infrastructure costs, reduced communications charges, and reduced administrative expenditure, as well as the deployment of enhanced services.

Although voice over IP (VoIP) has been thrust into the limelight by the runaway success of Skype in recent years, players in the business arena have been working with the technology for much longer – and the uptake of the technology is gathering pace.

“The conversion to VoIP is the dominant factor in the enterprise voice market over the next several years,” said Steve Raab, director of IP Telephony Research for Dell'Oro Group in a recent report.

Meanwhile, investigations from another research house, In-Stat, found that enterprise implementations of traditional PBX systems has begun to stagnate, while IP solutions have gained favour over the last year.

The researcher believes that the use of IP solutions now nearly rivals the use of traditional circuit-switched PBX equipment.

“Future purchase plans indicate a hastening shift to IP solutions, particularly in the small business market, where IP-enabled and IP-based purchase plans are nearly double that of traditional PBX or Key Systems,” said David Lemelin, an In-Stat analyst.

Whereas consumers are mostly restricted to PC-based softphones – or more recently traditional telephone adapters or even dedicated IP phones – developments in the business space, particularly with the event of Power over Ethernet (POE) devices, have eliminated the need for separate power sources and have increased reliability.

Free calling not just within a business’s campus, but anywhere on its corporate WAN, with the potential of global coverage also a main attraction of VoIP. For calls made to a traditional phone, the data packets will be sent to a VoIP gateway run by the company’s provider where it will be converted back into an analogue signal and sent over the PSTN legacy telephone network.

Although free calling is the most hyped benefit of VoIP, along with fairly linear initial overheads, the technology opens up the opportunity to deploy a multitude of new features not available on traditional telephone services. These include the ability to forward voice messages to email accounts and have them played back through a PC; access to voicemail via the internet; more complex address books and contact lists; call diversion or forwarding to any other number; and the ability to have more than one number ring at once. All this is in addition to services typical to traditional phone lines, such as conference calling, call waiting, caller display and faxing.

Furthermore, with a recent shift in the industry to the supply of VoIP over Wi-Fi services, you can also take your phone number and free calling package anywhere, so long as you have an internet connection.

According to a recent study by Infonetics Research, stellar growth in this area is being driven by the growing availability of wireless VoIP handsets from the likes of Nokia, and voice-enabling wireless infrastructure.

“While increasing employee mobility and productivity are currently the top reasons for deploying WLANs, voice over WLAN is a growing driver and is potentially disruptive,” said Infonetics Research analyst Richard Webb.

“The traditional model of time- and distance-based pricing for voice calls is being eroded by VoIP, and as VoIP goes wireless, it presents an opportunity for enterprise users and a challenge for operators,” he added.

Although most enterprises are still clinging to their trusty and traditional circuit switched networks for handling voice traffic, their grip is slackening on legacy technology. The bottom line is that organisations are seeing IP telephony as a mature technology that is safe to deploy. Clearing this one hurdle, and moving from immaturity to maturity, has set future adoption on an upward growth curve.