Has VoIP come of age?

UK distributor ANS wants to recruit up to 20 dealers for its innovaphone Voice over IP products, convinced that the market is ripe for convergence technologies.

It has combined all its VoIP incentives for the 10 to 20 dealers that join the innovaphone Convergence Expert programme into one package, with the hope of stimulating sales in the range.

"Some dealers are missing out on a massive revenue opportunity," said Kevin Winstanley, managing director of ANS.

"It's a specialised sell; you can't tell a director his IP telephony system is going to cost 25 per cent more and not offer any additional advantages.

"However, with training and technical knowledge, dealers can explain the benefits of things like applications integration and make sales."

Dealers joining the scheme get marketing material, lead generation, a dedicated account handler and a technical specialist on loan to help out with pitches.

In return they must buy a demonstration rig costing £999 and send two engineers for training in VoIP, which costs £900.

The VoIP industry has been suffering a lack of cohesion. Systems are usually provided by telephony organisations with little interest in data, or by networking groups with little understanding of telephony.

Despite some convergence, both sides still lack skills they need to get the most from VoIP, with confusion over the possibilities and pitfalls of the end result.

"Corporates understand the benefits of VoIP but we're not seeing huge uptake yet," said Sandy Fitzpatrick, senior analyst at market watcher Canalys.

"Convergence is happening between data and telephony VoIP providers but it's going to take years rather than months. The differences between the two groups are huge and both camps are missing some vital skills sets."