Cheap calls wooed the early adopters, but with a bit of
hard work, presence and collaboration services can cement the
marriage of voice and data networks. John Kavanagh
reports
The romance began with Skype wooing consumers with free phone calls
through their home PCs. It blossomed as companies took voice over
IP to their hearts, enticed by the prospect of free phone calls
across their existing data networks.
But companies are now finding they have to work hard at the
maturing relationship to enjoy the wider benefits of IP telephony
and to overcome issues ignored in the initial excitement.
"Cost savings are still a primary decision factor but companies
are looking more rigorously at the overall business case," says
Gartner analyst Katja Ruud. "The collaborative potential of VoIP
now gets included, especially in the light of new multimedia IP
services.
"There are so many options now: you can leverage your existing
network and manage VoIP yourself, use your own network but let
someone else manage it, or use a hosted service or one of various
other managed service offerings. We spend a lot of time discussing
with users how to mix and match the alternatives."
VoIP certainly looks inevitable. User surveys put the number of
organisations in the UK using IP telephony seriously at between 25%
and 40% - with an expected increase to 85% to 90% in the next two
years.
Indeed, voice services are by far the main reason behind
organisations moving towards converged IP networks, according to
the latest annual survey by the Communications Management
Association (CMA).
It found that 60% of managers cited VoIP as the primary reason
for network convergence. In a separate question, 73% said VoIP was
a key element of their collaboration strategy - up from 63% last
year.
Cost savings come in various ways. For example, calls between
scattered offices on the IP network are free, and a single voice
and data network can be cheaper and easier to manage and expand.
Other benefits highlighted by suppliers and users include staff
being able to have the same phone number wherever they are and
greater flexibility to allow staff to work from home.
Things get more complicated with the less tangible benefits of
looking beyond phone calls and adding VoIP to other applications on
converged networks.
In particular, unified communications was mentioned by 40% of
respondents in the CMA survey as a reason for moving to a converged
network - up from 30% the year before.
The significance of the merging of voice and data networks is
reflected in Microsoft's interest in this market, not least through
the launch of its Office Communications Server 2007 software, the
update to Live Communications Server 2005.
"Traditionally, VoIP has meant swapping one cable for another
and providing a new phone, with the user seeing little difference,
but we see VoIP as part of something much bigger," says Mark
Deakin, unified communications manager at Microsoft UK.
"We are certainly seeing increasing interest in VoIP, but
different people have different ideas about what it is. For some it
is Skype, for others it is about saving money by using an upgraded
IP network, but if end-users still have to tap in the extension
number on their phone, they are not getting anything new.
They should be able to jump from e-mail into a video phone call
with a simple click, using presence services such as Instant
Messenger, or click on a contact in Outlook, instead of having to
exchange numbers and fix a time."
Presence awareness was identified as a benefit of VoIP systems
by 22% of managers in the CMA survey. Better collaboration was
mentioned by 35%, and the related issues of web conferencing and
workflow were cited by about 18%.
Deakin says, "All this means that it is important to look beyond
the savings on phone calls and to look at giving value to users by
taking the opportunity to review the entire communications
strategy."
Companies certainly need to pay more attention to preparing a
proper business case for VoIP, says Charles Davis, chief executive
at IP network supplier SAS Group. "Many organisations feel there is
no alternative to IP telephony and do not stop to consider whether
there is a business case to support it," he says.
Others echo this point. "People recognise that the benefits go
beyond call cost savings, but many organisations, especially
smaller companies, do not quite know what the extra benefits are or
how to measure them," says Ruud.
"Easier collaboration and being able to contact someone quicker:
will these save an hour a week? It is hard to make a business case
on factors like these, so companies go back to the hard savings and
look at these other things as a bonus."
The business case is further complicated because a switch to
VoIP often means replacing expensive traditional internal phone
exchanges.
"The business justification for implementing IP telephony on a
site where there is an existing switch can be difficult," says Nick
Leake, director of operations and infrastructure at ITV. The
broadcaster introduced VoIP as part of the replacement of the
company's entire IT set-up - a project that won a medal in last
year's British Computer Society IT Professional Awards.
"You have got to decommission a capital asset and spend more
capital on the new equipment," Leake says. "The natural thing is to
sweat the existing asset until it dies, which could be many years.
So establishing the business case has proved a bit tricky for
us.
"It includes not having lots of different maintenance contracts,
reduced administration costs, and being able to have a single
number plan across all sites.
"At ITV, we switched to VoIP gradually. IP telephones were
provided to 1,500 of our 6,000 users initially, with the rest
following on. Many of the first batch were at greenfield sites, and
it made sense from a wiring point of view to put one set of cabling
in. This became a default in all our new sites and sites where we
were upgrading local area networks."
Opening a new office or moving to a new headquarters offers one
of the best opportunities to move to VoIP. In normal circumstances
a gradual migration is suggested by many user companies and
suppliers. This might range from temporary or permanent use of an
external service to a hybrid approach, with software in a black box
enabling a traditional voice switch to provide VoIP features.
Microsoft, for example, works with the likes of Nortel and Mitel
in this area, and the Communications and IT Association, which
represents suppliers, is testing interoperation between traditional
switches and IP networks.
Explaining the need for the tests, the association says, "The
take-up of converged solutions was slower than anticipated, mainly
because of user concern over product compatibility issues when
delivering voice services over data networks."
Experience is pushing other issues to the fore as users realise
that moving to VoIP is a major technical project, even without
allowing for all the potential changes to the way end-users
work.
"Many organisations launch headlong into VoIP without
considering the scope of the project, and often with no real
knowledge of what is involved," says Davis. "All areas of the
project, including local and wide area networks, servers,
applications, switches and routers, need to be considered if
organisations are to avoid escalating costs and implementation
issues, just as in any other major project."
Many suppliers urge prospective VoIP users to conduct a network
review. A simple starting point is the fact that one VoIP call
typically uses 20kbps if a company does not have the bandwidth to
cope with this, call quality will suffer.
More than 70% of managers questioned by the CMA said VoIP
quality was a "major concern".
"VoIP is fast revolutionising communications, but many
businesses are less than satisfied with the quality of
transmission, because they have rushed to install the technology,"
says Carrie Higbie, network applications manager at network
infrastructure supplier Siemon. "They forget that their cabling
infrastructure must now support both voice and data.
"VoIP suppliers recommend an infrastructure audit before
implementation because the quality of transmission for voice
packets is much more demanding than for data packets, and
transmission delay, packet loss and jitter must be kept to a
minimum.
"Network managers need to ask whether the infrastructure can
handle the new VoIP system. Does it meet today's standards? Will
the increased traffic slow existing applications and affect
business operations?"
Such questions become more pressing if wireless voice networks
in offices are being considered. More than 60% of managers
questioned by the CMA said wireless VoIP was of significant
interest, compared with 55% the year before, but Ruud says the
business case is difficult to make.
"There is a big discussion on whether to add voice to the
wireless Lan. Companies say that everyone walks around offices
using their mobiles, but for VoIP you usually have to upgrade the
network. The handsets are quite expensive, and there might be the
alternative of negotiating a better deal with your mobile
operator."
Security too is coming under scrutiny. This was the only area in
the CMA survey where most (53%) VoIP users were not satisfied.
"We have certainly had more queries about security in the past
year," says Ruud. "In particular, as commercial service offerings
increase, there are concerns about whether users in one company are
sharing a backbone network with others."
So the honeymoon is over. VoIP and its users have moved from
romance to the realities of marriage. Whatever the trials and
tribulations, the joys mean that this marriage is unlikely to end
in divorce.
VoIP case studies
www.computerweekly.com/221496
VoIP special report: Making a case for VoIP
VoIP special report: VoIP quality of service monitoring
advice