Enterprise VoIP - Glittering prize?
While, for many enterprises, Voice over IP may seem to make sound financial sense, there are a number of issues which must be examined before taking the idea to the board, says Rick Marshall
More than a decade has elapsed since the IT and telecommunication industries heralded a new era of convergence. Few, at the time, had any real concept of what they really meant and that included the vendors themselves.
As the market grew to understand how to manage convergence between voice and data, it needed to find some way to make this happen. It also needed a compelling reason as to why business would ditch something it knows well and is proven technology in favour of the unknown.
The Internet Protocol (IP) dominates the way we move data in a digital world. As voice looked for a new way outside of analogue, it willingly embraced digital. For the operators, digital offered a more resilient network capable of carrying vast amounts of extra data. Networks were already going digital to deal with data, so simply adding voice made perfect sense.
Having resolved the ‘how’, the next issue is the ‘why’. Cost savings, lower costs, reduced costs are the mantras of the VoIP sales teams. On the face of it they have a very compelling case.
Whenever you make a call over a traditional Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTN), you pay a charge. Even in the USA and some other countries that claim free local calls, these are no indefinite calls and there is an initial connection charge. Voice minutes have underpinned the financial stability of the telephony market for decades. Even though they are at an all time lowest cost, few companies have experienced lower call costs year on year.
The costs of telephony to a company are not just limited to call minutes. PBX equipment, telephones, fax machines, setting up call groups, writing software to integrate into applications such as call centres, voice mail, and follow-me services – are all examples of applications and costs associated with a corporate network. Some of these are real issues, such as software integration solutions that are hard to program, unreliable, difficult to keep synchronised with the user and when they don’t work, a support nightmare. VoIP has built itself a position by offering to eliminate or severely reduce all of these issues. The problem is, this is a clear case of overselling. VoIP is not the universal healing potion for voice that it has been said to be. So what is a real saving and what is mythology?
Call costs can be massively reduced, at least at the PSTN level. Reduced not eliminated. There is no guarantee that you will be able to only use IP end to end on the call. As soon as you touch a PSTN link, you will have some cost associated with the call. Some services such as Fax over IP (FoIP) are a long way behind VoIP and therefore cannot be counted as a real saving.
Replacing PBX equipment is only really going to occur when the equipment has already been amortised out. These were high value purchases that the organisation will want to wring every last penny from. Replacing early will need a compelling case. If the equipment is on lease or outsourced, then there may be significant charges associated with early replacement.
Handsets on the desktop can be a huge problem. VoIP handsets have dropped massively in price over the last year but they are still many times the cost of a standard desk telephone. If you think that plugging a headset into the soundcard of a PC or laptop is going to be acceptable to users, then you are going to be in for a rude awakening. Entry level prices for handsets can be around £80 rising to over £140 depending on the handset chosen. Try multiplying that by the number of users.
While some handsets draw little power and can be provided for via Power over Ethernet (PoE), the more fully featured handsets will need a power socket. The network administrators will already have a numbering plan for IP addresses. This plan is almost certainly under extreme stress as the IT department tries to cope with the influx of laptops, PDA and SmartPhones as well as other IP-enabled devices, being connected to the network. Adding roaming IP devices that require external IP addresses inside the corporate LAN may also cause management issues.
A number of vendors are using VoIP as a vehicle to persuade companies to move away from IPv4 to IPv6. This has an impact on all the equipment in the network, on management as well as on training for administrators and network staff. It’s a cost that is rarely ever mentioned in any discussions over cost of implementation.
Application integration is a big gain for IP telephony. With everything digital, developers can build new classes of enterprise messaging applications that combine voice and data seamlessly. Follow-me truly does follow the user. You have a single IP address for all your telephony. It could be assigned to the telephone on the desk beside you, your laptop, your PDA, even your SmartPhone. No matter where you are in the world, when you connect to the Internet, you are connected to your phone number.
But let’s not lose sight of the network. Greenfield sites are wonderful examples of what can be achieved. The network can be designed from the ground up with all the equipment and cabling capable of carrying much more traffic than it initially needs to. In the real world, the network might be capable of carrying the data but without sufficient metrics to prove that, it cannot be taken for granted.
Much of the data we move around corporate networks is not time sensitive. VoIP is. Get this wrong and users will not trust the service. When you pick up a PSTN handset today, you have a level of expectation that has been set by standards bodies and ensure no echo, no interference, just a clear channel where you can hear the caller and understand the message. Mobile telephony is different. While we all complain about mobility being used as an excuse for an inferior service it certainly doesn’t seem to have dampened our love affair with mobile telephony.
If the users get drop-out, interference, cross-talk and a poor experience, all the cost justifications in the world will be so much hot air. Telling the CEO that the savings are more important than his being able to talk to the corporate bankers over a reliable, quality service is a quick way to a new career.
If this sounds like you shouldn’t even be considering VoIP then stop. This is about setting expectations, identifying the challenges, not the problems. If you are going to implement VoIP then maybe the following points will help you establish what the real business benefits of enterprise voice over IP are:
1. Test the network to ensure it can manage the additional data.
2. Ensure that Quality of Service can be implemented and is sufficient to support VoIP.
3. Assess the impact of roaming IP devices.
4. Agree a Service Level Agreement with the business that provides clear targets for performance.
5. Roll out slowly. A big bang will destabilise the network from IP address down to the architecture, switches and cabling.
6. Be realistic about the costs of implementation and the savings. Return on Investment sounds good but make sure that you can deliver it before promising it.
7. Look carefully at the new enterprise messaging applications you want to build and ensure that you factor in time for training developers so that they can deliver this.
8. Create an ongoing set of metrics and a monitoring system to predict failure rather than react to it.
VoIP can be delivered to the Enterprise with remarkable results, but only if you go into it with realistic expectations and not just focussed on the hard sell.
Rick Marshall is Managing Director of Comunica Limited www.comunica.co.uk
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