The Right Time To Adopt IP Telephony?

[Sunite]

The Right Time To Adopt IP Telephony?
By Vikki Bland
September 25, 2007 11:25AM

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Tony Jayne, managing director for Agile Technologies, which delivers Avaya IP telephony solutions, says IP telephony has matured. "Businesses are starting to see that IP telephony is not all about cost savings, but also about delivering strategic value to the business. It's now possible to embed telephony into everything you do," says Jayne.

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   Telephony
   IP
   VoIP
   Communications
   Presence
   Collaboration

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   Here's a thought: not all small businesses need to invest in IP telephony Relevant Products/Services yet. Yes, all private and business telephony will eventually run across an IP network, whether that network is public (the Internet) or private (the business's own data network), but for many small businesses, there's simply no rush to replace legacy telephony equipment and software in the meantime. After all, businesses already have access to a voice service, and it's possible to buy improved applications for traditional digital telephony systems. So who needs IP telephony? And what does it deliver that traditional telephony can't?

Christchurch, New Zealand company Aucom, which employs 70 people and distributes electronic motor management systems, recently installed an Alcatel IP telephony system from Alcatel partner implementer DownerCommspec. Network administrator Reon Dunlop says Aucom realized it needed IP telephony when it expanded into a building across a public road and found it wasn't possible to cable between the buildings. Instead, Aucom set up two new wireless Relevant Products/Services streams within its local wireless area network; one for data traffic and one for voice. Voice and data traffic to and from the new building now travels over the wireless IP link with voice calls managed from the company's legacy PABX system.

They put a 16 port IP card into the PABX box which also manages 45 to 50 normal digital phones. "Our existing license meant we could have installed another 16 digital phones in the box but we went with the 16-port IP card instead so we could put 16 IP phones across the wireless link," says Dunlop.

He says the effect of this enforced move to IP telephony is "so far, so good" but a wired IP network would deliver better voice quality and data speeds.

"One of the issues we have is the performance of the data wireless link. It is a bit slow, but that is due to the way the network is set up at our end. In the future we may have to put a [dedicated] server over there and have people in the other building remotely logged in," says Dunlop. He says Aucom previously looked at Investing in wired IP telephony, but demurred due to the cost.

"The licensing cost for IP phones is about the same. But when it came to the cost of upgrading the data network to run both voice and data we went 'well, we won't do that quite yet.' IP telephony is not quite as simple as 'plug it in and away you go,'" says Dunlop. (continued...)

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