It is quite common for managers to believe that cost savings can be achieved by hanging on to IT equipment for longer than their ideal ‘use by’ dates. Doing this can be quite risky however. Companies relying on out of date equipment often find that it hampers business efficiency, that available support fades over time and that integration with newly introduced systems is difficult if not impossible.
Making the most of VoIP
IP PBXs are starting to dominate the enterprise equipment market. But TDM trunking remains the norm, unnecessarily limiting the advantages business customers can realise from IP voice in both capabilities and cost. The answer to this dilemma is still relatively little used.
Introduction
To realize the value of unified communications, most enterprises will have to integrate new communications solutions within existing infrastructures. Because some legacy systems will not offer a clear onramp to unified communications, an organization will want to evaluate vendors based on their abilities to minimize disruption by leveraging existing infrastructure and user experience, as well as their ability to help weigh the business, technical and product considerations that would yield the right solution to meet the organization’s needs.
Regardless of how impressive a vendor’s technology is, it’s the systems integrator that can make or break a Voice over IP rollout in your business. The systems integrator is at the coalface – working closely with your business to manage the project and ensure the new technology plays nicely with your existing systems. All the fancy technology in the world is of little use if you can’t get it to meet your business needs.
Many enterprises are already using VoIP. However, many are only using it for communication on the enterprise LAN. In this scenario VoIP is only being used as a one-to-one replacement for traditional wireline telephony. For all calls made to outside the LAN, a PSTN (Public Switched Telephony Network) gateway on the enterprise edge is used.
SP: Can you describe briefly the role of the SI P Forum and your position within it?
MR: The SIP Forum was founded eight years ago as a non-profit IP communications industry association to promote the adoption of SIP by the companies developing products and services. Fast forward to today and now virtually every product is SIP-based.
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