Deploying Voice Over IP
How much do you know about Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solutions, like IP Telephony (IPT)? Do you believe they’re primarily for home users interested in free long-distance calls or inexpensive international calls? Or, do you believe its primary benefit is the lower total cost of ownership (TCO) of managing all of your business communications over a converged network?
The interesting thing about VoIP is that in many ways the end user is driving the technology to the business world. Individual users have helped accelerate the VoIP revolution with the acceptance of Vonage and Skype in their homes as well as VoIP prepaid calling cards with reduced long distance rates. In the past, you may have considered deploying VoIP in your business as a way to drive down toll charges between offices, but you were hesitant due to poor voice quality in early deployment models. Today, as the business world continues to deploy robust VoIP networks, you may now be investigating your own options with renewed vigor.
In fact, both large and small enterprises are taking the plunge and making decisions about VoIP. According to research analyst Frost & Sullivan, “Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) will account for approximately 75% of world’s voice services by 007.” This is staggering when considering that in 00 , worldwide total voice revenue was more than US $1 trillion. Why are so many companies jumping on the VoIP bandwagon? And, what did they consider when making the switch? This paper looks at VoIP with small-to-medium size 3 businesses in mind, and we’ll address some of these issues.
Where do we begin?
The first undertaking is to understand and agree with the strategy that converged networks will reduce toll charges, while making your network easier to manage because you are only managing one network rather than two separate ones. Ultimately, your company’s total cost of ownership (TCO) will be lowered, and you will benefit from a host of new and integrated applications that are available when you combine your voice and data networks. So if you agree that VoIP can provide you with a reduced TCO of your voice and data networks coupled with a flexible business communications system that is easier to administer moves, adds and changes, then let’s proceed to build the business case.
What’s the correct approach for my business?
Dimension Data recommends that you commence any discussion about VoIP by looking at your business communication requirements as well as by examining your existing voice and data networks to determine how “convergence-ready” you are. In other words, how prepared is your data network infrastructure to handle a mission-critical application like voice, and possibly video? Once you’ve gathered information from key personnel, identified your business communication requirements and looked at your future initiatives and existing systems, you’re ready to begin the process.
Is a gradual implementation best?
If you’re thinking about implementing a VoIP platform, “rip-and-replace” is not your only option. Once you make a decision to implement VoIP in your business, you can begin to incorporate a strategy in your network hardware purchases. For example, if you’re purchasing a new router, make sure it has voice and security features integrated rather than purchasing a conventional data-only router. If you proceed to purchase network hardware and upgrade existing equipment, you’ve begun the process of a gradual migration to VoIP, by laying the foundation for a converged network. If you buy an integrated services router, it can also function as a LAN switch and an IP-PBX when you’re ready to move to VoIP. It may add a few dollars to your router purchase, but it extends the life of the router by being “convergence-ready”.
Also, look at the cost of support for your existing router. If you’ve depreciated your router or purchased it outright, remember to add in the cost of support. An old router that adds $7,500 in support charges each year isn’t free. If you’re purchasing a switch, make sure to invest in one that has Power over Ethernet (PoE) ports, which enables IP phones to be powered by an Ethernet cable when you migrate to IPT. This basic approach to upgrades and network equipment purchases, extends the value of the gear and positions you for the future. If you’re not ready for VoIP today, this approach will provide you with a gradual migration to a VoIP platform in the future.
How do I assess my IT environment?
Once you’ve made the commitment to buy “convergence-ready” network gear, begin your VoIP assessment. Understand your business drivers, assess your current infrastructure, perform “what if” scenarios so you analyze different options from every perspective – technical, business and financial. This approach will allow you to get the maximum value from your VoIP network when you’re ready. If possible, partner with a full-service IT solutions provider, like Dimension Data, who can help you recognize potential issues and recommend solutions that can enhance the platform.
Take small steps at first. Choose a pilot with a few users before rolling out your project throughout your organization. Or, start with a small office or Greenfield location, enabling you to roll those locations into the main sites when you migrate the remainder of the organization to VoIP. As you begin to enable your locations with VoIP, you also begin to build in redundancy and resiliency in your voice platform as individual sites can serve as disaster recovery sites for other locations within your organization.
VoIP platforms are becoming an integral component in the corporate telecommunications environment. A well-designed VoIP system can complement an existing TDM PBX environment and gradually replace it when the legacy equipment is no longer serviceable and doesn’t meet the company’s requirements. This hybrid environment benefits both the company and the users because a company can easily migrate to VoIP when the time is right, and users can gradually enjoy the features VoIP brings. By taking small steps, the end users will become familiar with VoIP and its benefits and the overall implementation will ultimately be much smoother.
http://www.datacraft-asia.com – The leading independent IT services and solutions company in Asia Pacific. Datacraft combines an expertise in networking, security, Microsoft solutions, storage and contact centre technologies.
V O I P Phone System: Advantages And Disadvantages
Over the years, communications has drastically evolved with the help of computer electronics. Communicating across the world has been fairly easy for anybody who is familiar with computers and for most of them it’s for free.
One major contributing factor for this evolution is the development and advancement of the VOIP telephony system. It has crossed international communication with a zip by eliminating expensive overseas call. Since the platform for this technological wonder is internet based, the caller and the recipient only need a DSL connection which is fairly common among businesses and households. Adapting to this communication system is quick since applications come for free or pre installed with other software.
Though this technology may bring wonders to the way the world communicates this doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its share of flawless. Here are the pros and cons of using VOIP.
Advantages:
- Mostly the service is free but dependent on the speed of the ISP connection.
- The data being used is interpreted as data being sent over the network just like as it is in an e-mail so typical internet structure is only needed.
- The bandwidth consumption is just half of what a regular analog telephone uses to connect to other telephones.
Disadvantages:
- Mainly, VOIP is powered by electricity. Unlike telephones, their cables have just enough current to power the components inside the telephone and make a phone call possible even if there is no power.
- Most electronic household devices are all linked to the telephone line. If the house has a security system that is DTMF coded, it is most likely telephone line dependent. Turning on and off the alarm or configuring a new setting with this security system can be done remotely via analog telephone. As of now VOIP is not capable of tapping their system to these security features.
- The VOIP line is dependent on the ISP’s availability. If the ISP suffers downtime which is common among internet connections so does the VOIP phone system.
- If the ISP experience data lag, the VOIP user might also experience packet data loss which can be garbage audio over the other party.
- Another issue facing VOIP users is when the computer or the processor max out on its limits to process data and you are on an important phone call, it normally shuts down or hangs up, so that’s one business deal going down the drain.
- A long shot problem VOIP might be facing since it is computer component based is the virus. Though there haven’t been reports of viruses infecting VOIPs or infected packets used in VOIP but it’s a possibility in the near future.
As of now VOIP has always been paired off with the traditional telephone since its platform is not that stable as the analog telephony. It can be of great advantage if used as a supplement to an existing analog telephone line but not as a main telephone.
James Brown writes about http://www.softwaredealsdiscounts.com
Key Benefits of IP Telephony
IP telephony has reshaped the business organizations and revolutionized the way the business firms communicate. IP telephony is a sophisticated style of communication technology that allows all types of communications including audio, video, and wired as well as wireless voice, through the usage of Internet Protocol (IP) network.
In other words, IP telephony is simply a term collectively given for technologies that adopt packet-switched connections of the Internet Protocol in order to exchange fax, voice, and other forms of information, which were previously done via the public switched telephone network’s (PSTN) dedicated circuit-switched connections.
Through the unification of many locations within a business firm, for example, uniting mobile workers into a single converged network, IP telephony provides innovative as well as tailor made solutions for your communication purposes. A multitude of innovative features are attached with IP telephony, including, high degree of scalability and survivability, multi-site connectivity through the data network, sophisticated calling features, web conferencing integration, WebSphere portal integration, and unified box.
IP telephony technology offers a myriad of significant cost as well as performance benefits over maintaining a separate network for voice, video, and data. One of the key benefits of IP telephony is enhanced productivity. Since IP telephony supports a host of applications and devices, it enables employees to carry out their tasks more effectively and efficiently.
For example, IP SoftPhone – a software-based application – allows phone users to incorporate their telephone functionality into their desktop or laptop PC. Similarly, IP videoconferencing is a great way for employees at different sites to effectively communicate, thereby reducing the business travel expenses as well as the need for face to face business conferences.
Another key benefit of IP telephony is improved business resiliency. As IP telephony solutions are structured in such a way to detect and eliminate single points of failure, it can be dispersed to safe guard against local troubles in service and to automatically redirect data, voice, and video traffic around failures.
Perhaps, most significant of the benefits of this communication system is cost savings, since IP telephony has capability to converge voice as well as data networks into a single cohesive network, the overall management system is streamlined from a single location, which in turn ensures reduced costs for moves, adds, and changes.
Improved customer responsiveness is also a key benefit of IP telephony. The success of any business organization depends on the way you satisfy your customers. Good communication is also vital for maintaining customer reliability. Since IP telephony enables for options for business firms to effectively communicate with their customers, it not only allows for improved communication but also for reaping benefits of low cost infrastructure.
Key benefits of IP telephony also include:
- Ability to concentrate on core business functions
- Automation of routine administrative functions
- Riddance of intra-site long distance expenses
- Reduced administration as well as network costs
- Effective optimization of existing resources
- Elimination of risks associated with vendor lock-in
- Integrated applications
- Simplified administration in connection with telecommunications infrastructure
- Enhanced efficiency of IT resources
- Guaranteed service delivery
- Enhanced operational efficiencies
- Effectively bring together mobile and remote employees
- Add innovative features including hardware
- Reduced telecom cost via toll by pass
- Increased mobility, ie, with the introduction of this technology, employees are no longer tied up with the phone in their offices. This in turn has enabled the workers to communicate on business matters from home or even from the road
- Benefits of virtual workforce, ie, this system enables it allows call centers and other business desks to operate independent of physical boundaries
- Effective as well as efficient management of your fax, voicemail, and email messages
- In most cases, IPT environment is safe and secure
- Above all, IP telephony system aids for future business growth
From the aforesaid discussion, it is evident that IP telephony is an inseparable segment of today’s challenging as well as rapidly growing business environment.
Nowadays, scores of service providers are in the scenario to provide world-class, managed services for IP telephony. Many of them render lifecycle support and management for IP telephony environments, thereby allowing business organizations to concentrate on their prime revenue generating business activities.
http://www.datacraft-asia.com – The leading independent IT services and solutions company in Asia Pacific. Datacraft combines an expertise in networking, security, Microsoft solutions, storage and contact centre technologies.
The Users of Phone Service VOIP
Internet, phone service VOIP, cell phones and two-way talking televisions are fast taking over our culture. It is for this reason that we need to become educated about these aspects so that we can properly combat the aspects of these issues that are to come.
We must warn others, too, so that they will be ready when the time comes to actually learn how to use some of this great stuff. Take the VOIP services, for example. Who wouldn’t want to make a phone call over the internet?
So what is influencing this grand influx in communications? Is it just the way people have always been or is the exciting medium of phone service VOIP entertaining the notion of people stepping outside of their comfort zones for a look at how the other half lives?
A quick gander around at some of the usual suspects of cell phone and VOIP phone services use will tell us that some answers are more confusing, in fact, than the questions.
Take the teenage girl demographic, for example. Without getting too stereotypical, many teenage girls spend upwards of thirteen hours a day on the telephone talking to their girl friends about boy friends and how those boy friends look in designer blue jeans or the latest hoodies from Hot Topic.
This demographic, according to VOIP vendor providers like Skype, are most likely to utilize VOIP services and are most likely to help put VOIP vendors and their families into much larger homes with much larger swimming pools. The cash flow in terms of the teen girl demographic is so huge in terms of Voice over Internet Protocol calls, in fact, that many people can retire after just one afternoon of calls taken from the Eastern seaboard.
Another demographic that is popular is the office worker. This asexual workaholic demographic often spends hours on the telephone as well, brokering some sort of deal from Botswana for hours with people that do not speak the same language. This miscommunication enables workers at VOIP providers to make a lot of money from the phone calls.
The customer, however, still saves a considerable amount of cash on the long distance because most VOIP vendor packages charge little to nothing in terms of long distance. So whether the deal crashes in Botswana or not, everybody wins.
A huge demographic that uses VOIP on a regular basis would be the chatroom types. These people, both male and female, tend to use VOIP services to create a bigger connection to their chatroom friends and create more realism to their experience.
Using phone service VOIP to converse adds an element of vocalized realism to the conversation that you just can’t get from typing in what you’re doing.
VOIP companies have a lot to gain from the variety of possibilities they can get in terms of customers from all over the world. The change in social climate, call it a “social warming”, is bringing people closer together and creating such an influx in social necessity that people all over the world are turning to VOIP services.
The reality behind this is that companies such as Skype or Yahoo have a lot to gain from offering phone service VOIP packages on their websites. Without these phone service VOIP packages, we might all be up a creek without a prayer.
Mike Selvon owns a number of niche portal. Please visit our Voip portal at http://voip.trustprofitableniche.com for more great tips on phone service voip, and leave a comment at our blog at http://www.mynicheportal.com/technology/.