How can you use IP networks to gain financial benefits
in addition to taking advantage of sophisticated features? Antony
Adshead finds out
In 1992 at a meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, a
heated debate over the future of internet protocols turned angry
and so-called “father of the internet” Vint Cerf tore off his shirt
to reveal a T-shirt bearing the slogan “IP on Everything”.
A typically loopy act in the high priesthood of geekdom, for
sure, but incredibly prophetic – we are now very close to "IP on
everything" in the network.
In June, BT announced that IP will be used for voice and data
over its national network in its 21st Century Network programme.
More recently, analyst Gartner predicted that 90% of all new
corporate telephone systems will be IP-enabled by 2008.
The advantages to you of basing your business around IP is that
it is one protocol that has become dominant in voice and data
traffic, so that you can use economies resulting from
standardisation and convergence in addition to taking advantage of
sophisticated features.
Maren Bennette, regional business development manager for SMEs
for Cisco Systems in South West England, points to IP’s growing
dominance driving down costs.
“IP networking is much simpler than its predecessors – such as
SNA, X.25 and ATM – because it is based on well-understood common
standards and technology. Because it is simple compared with other
networking technologies, it has achieved a wide customer base and
has driven the cost of networking appliances and bandwidth down to
a level easily affordable by all.”
You may not need reminding of the fact that cost has always been
a pressing consideration for companies of your size, and in the
past this consideration has probably meant that you have been able
only to afford the basics and lacked the cash or resources to
support the sophisticated technology that put them on a par with
larger competitors.
An evolutionary approach Mike Valiant, international market
development manager for voice solutions at 3COM, says businesses
like yours want the benefits associated with networking but do not
want the complexity that historically comes with it.
“SMEs want the functionality of corporate products but they have
to be less expensive and easier to install and maintain. With
limited IT staff, companies like yours need easy-to-use, lowcost
products,” he says.
He says companies like yours are uniquely able to take advantage
of the latest technologies. You will likely not be hidebound by
rigid corporate policy, and rapid growth can mean an evolutionary
approach to network technology suits them.
“Most new technologies fit into a phase of SME network
implementation – setting up a basic data network, enabling remote
and internet access, adding voice capabilities to the data network
and exploring wireless solutions. Each is a natural evolutionary
progression from the other.”
Andy Rawll, product manager for Avaya’s SMB converged
communication system, IP Office, says you can now take advantage of
technologies previously only available to corporates. The growing
number of solutions that converge voice and data using IP mean that
sophisticated features are available to almost every business.
“IP levels the playing field and redefines the rules of
engagement – smaller businesses can now build communications
infrastructures that are microcosms of those deployed by larger
business. The benefits of converged communications are now within
reach of the budget, skills and capabilities of businesses like
yours, enabling them to compete with larger ones.
“You can standardise applications, user interfaces and network
interfaces to one common, open and standard networking protocol and
simplified heterogeneous network infrastructures, where
best-of-breed and rightsized products from different vendors can be
combined in a cost-effective and commercially-compelling manner,”
he adds.
In IP telephony, the intelligence is in the handsets and not
necessarily the network, so far more can be done with an IP phone
than with an analogue or digital feature phone.
Because the phones are IP devices, linked over an IP network to
applications that are running on IP servers, applications can be
integrated far more deeply and at significantly lower costs than
was possible in the days of separate phone systems and data
networks. 3Com’s Valiant offers a low-risk method of migration to
IP telephony.
“Networked telephony is now an affordable solution for the SME.
But for those companies unwilling to make a full commitment they
can run networked telephony alongside their existing PBX so they
can become familiar with the technology and let their telephony
system grow at its own pace.
Basic architecture
“The business case for networked telephony is a strong one in
comparison with legacy PBXs – it has very low management and
maintenance costs. When the SME grows and expands, adding new users
to the system is a simple and straightforward process. The only
additional cost is a new handset, and the easy-to-use browser
administration tools mean that anyone who can navigate the internet
can easily manage the telephony system.”
This convergence of network applications means that as long as
your business gets the basic architecture right, it can design
networks to suit its needs easily. Cisco’s Bennette says this can
bring down costs too.
“Provided the underlying IP network – the routers, the LAN
switches, the security devices, etc – support quality of service
standards such as 802.1pq, the power over Ethernet standard 802.3af
and security standards such as IPSec, the SME can more or less
design the network to suit their own requirements,” she says.
You can sketch out possible scenarios. If voice is the driver
for deploying a new network, you can design it around applications
such as voicemail or IP contact centres, and perhaps not worry
whether the switches support Gigabit Ethernet.
On the other hand, if new data applications are the driver, then
network speed will be the most important factor.
While the arguments for IP voice are compelling, it is still a
technology in the early adopter phase, but for Bennette, all
businesses, no matter their size, should be looking at it.
“Voice is the one ubiquitous communications medium needed by all
people, in all aspects of their lives. So it is not a question of
who should consider it, but of when they should consider converging
voice and data – and video – to provide a single, easy-tomanage
network at a significantly lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than
multiple networks,” she says.
The answer to the "when" question will vary from company to
company. You may well take the opportunity of a PBX coming to the
end of its lease, or being made obsolete by the vendor, to deploy
an IP telephony solution. In an alternative scenario you could take
the budget available for a data network upgrade and add a little
extra to deploy IP telephony. For many companies like yours, the
most compelling trigger is when you move offices as you grow.
A car dealership in the South West region is a good example of a
SME taking advantage of converged network services.
Before IP networking convergence, the company would have to have
bought a telephone system, a data network and a DECT wireless phone
system for roaming staff. Instead, the company has installed
wireless data and IP telephony solutions that cost half as much to
buy and are much more easily managed than three separate networks –
and the staff are said to be delighted with the flexibility their
system provides them.
Wireless in that case is a vital component of the converged IP
network. For SMEs, the argument for wireless is a good one. That
can be simply because your senior managers want the freedom to use
their laptops wherever they like, or as a way of making yourselves
more competitive against larger companies by, for example, being
available to talk from the factory floor.
3Com’s Valiant insists wireless has a natural home in firms like
yours. “SMEs are characterised by rapid growth, moving offices as
they grow or moving people around, so wireless is an ideal
solution. The greatest benefit of wireless is its cost-effective
nature. Rather than having to pull up floors and drill holes in
walls, a wireless extension to a network will allow employees the
opportunity to access the network from anywhere in the office,
accessing real-time information at a fraction of the cost.”
The emergence of SIP
Another IP-based technology that is now featuring in products is
SIP – Session Initiation Protocol. This is a signalling protocol
that uses low bandwidth to overcome the limitations of the public
internet to support voice, making it viable to make and receive
calls over the web.
Paul Taylor, sales and marketing director at Swyx Solutions,
says this is a technology that can help bring down your costs.
“It works in a similar way to instant messaging, so users can
connect to an IP address rather than to a telephone number. The
major implication is that the cost of calls will be free, but a
further benefit is that it widens the choice of handsets that can
be used. As long as they are SIP compatible, they will work. This
significantly reduces the capital expenditure for IP telephone
equipment, making it even more affordable to the average SME in
both the short and longer term,” says Taylor.
Avaya’s Rawll says that applying the principles of instant
messaging technology to voice and data more widely could have as
big an impact on business as email did in the 1990s.
He says, “The application of the instant messaging concept to
other forms of communication is driving the idea of the ‘personal
workspace’, where communication with a user is no longer
device-centric but user-centric, providing a single ID or SIP
address for each user.
“This routes calls to their mobile, PDA, desk phone or e-mail
according to who is calling and availability of the called party,
perhaps based on their personal information manager or calendar
application.”
As with other IP-based technologies you will be able to take
advantage just as your larger competitors do. IP-on-everything
means your business is freed from the traditional costs associated
with cutting-edge advances in the past .