Hurricanes are looming offshore, threatening coastline dwellers
across the lower United States. After last year's mismanaged
Katrina nightmare, the American Red Cross is at the ready, having
deployed a hosted IP-based call centre that will keep in close
touch with its emergency workers in the field.
Verizon Business is providing the Red Cross with an advanced
Contact Centre Service solution, including hosted automatic call
distribution (ACD) services, to help the Red Cross improve its
emergency response for disaster victims. Equipping emergency
workers with IP phones means Verizon Business can route calls
between field workers and Red Cross disaster relief agents located
anywhere in the U.S.
In addition to the advanced call routing solution, Verizon
Business is providing the Red Cross with wide area network
connectivity, managed network services, toll-free enhanced call
routing, an interactive voice response service, contact centre
professional services, and customer premise equipment (CPE).
For the Red Cross, lessons learned from Katrina revealed that
they needed a system that was flexible and would provide the
communication they needed to quickly assist people affected by
disasters, whether hurricanes, earthquakes or avian flu.
"The key factor for us was [whether we really needed] to invest
in these core skills ourselves. For us, many external solutions can
augment things that we need for limited periods of time," said
Malcolm Welch, executive director of client services at the
American Red Cross. "There are 10 months out of the year when we
have no need for Verizon's voice services. During critical periods,
hosting creates a more judicious use of our people and time."
The Red Cross has guidelines for when to turn on the service.
For something very significant, like Katrina, the nonprofit
organisation learned that a solution that could be implemented and
-- depending on need -- ratcheted up at a moment's notice was the
way to go.
"We made a commitment to the general public that we would be
more prepared for large-scale disasters," Welch said. "Part of that
means what we do in our day-to-day environment has to be designed
to scale up quickly."
The Red Cross is a dramatic example of an environment ideal for
the flexibility of a hosted VoIP, but these services are finding a
need among enterprises across the board.
According to Yankee Group, more than 50% of enterprise
respondents in a recent survey called "The Hosted Opportunity" said
they believe a hosted VoIP environment would meet their needs in
the areas of lower capital costs, remote access, multi-site
networks, technology refresh and scalability. Slightly less (more
than 40%) weighed in with security, lower cost of refresh, control
and manageability as reasons that a hosted solution better meets
their needs.
"Unlike traditional voice, where stuff gets upgraded every seven
years, when you think of how fast software changes, that happens
every six months," said Zeus Kerravala, a Yankee Group analyst.
"The rate of change in telephony in the next five years is going to
be exponentially higher than it was in the last five years and that
means enterprises which use hosted voice don't have to make sure
the latest and greatest features are there and the bugs are worked
out. These companies can let the provider work that out.
Ultimately, it gives them more features at lower cost."
Another Verizon Business user, minor league baseball team Staten
Island Yankees, turned to hosted VoIP to avoid the tedious practice
of removing phone lines and users to streamline operations during
the off season, only to add them back again before the season
opener.
Rather than purchasing equipment and bolstering its IT staff
with telephony expertise, the organisation went with Verizon
Business's Hosted IP Centrex solution. Verizon Business's converged
VoIP network enables the Staten Island Yankees to streamline voice,
data and Internet connections over one network. Converged access
provides the bandwidth to accommodate the high-traffic period
without the expense associated with excess capacity during the off
season.
In addition, Web-based administrative functions streamlined the
process of adding new phones and users. The process has become the
simple task of logging on to the Hosted IP Centrex Web interface
and typing in the new user's name, extension and other details.
When it comes to hosted VoIP services, there are several
providers in addition to Verizon Business, including IBM Global
Services, Avaya, AT&T, Bellsouth and Accenture.
Whether it is a carrier-based provider that owns the network,
such as Verizon Business and AT&T, or a specialised VoIP
company such as Avaya, the prospects for enterprise users deploying
hosted VoIP services are that they will save money and benefit from
simplicity.
According to Will Stofega, research manager of VoIP services at
IDC, outsourcing your VoIP makes sense for companies of all
sizes.
"What [hosted voice services] bring is a hands-off approach to
telephony," Stofega said. "If you are thinking about telephony,
there is a steep learning curve: security, codex, latency, delay. A
hosted service takes that out of your cost structure. You pay one
set fee for a certain amount of licenses and you're ready to go.
You don't have to [be concerned] that after eight to nine years
you'll have to worry about how to look at this in terms of hardware
and maintenance upgrades."