The widespread uptake of VoIP telephony by the enterprise sector has revolutionised the local telephony market, making the technology all but mainstream. However, there are still pitfalls that need to be addressed when contemplating its implementation. Alan Hartstein explains.
If anyone is still in any doubt as to the impact that VoIP has had on the local marketplace, one need only look at some recent statistics from analyst IDC. In the December quarter of last year, 60% of new telephony equipment sales were in this sector, with IP PBX units significantly outselling traditional PABXs. This figure is tipped to grow to 69% by 2007.
A lot has certainly happened in this market over the last two years. No longer held back by serious concerns about quality of service, product maturity and security, VoIP is now being viewed by business as the underlying technology for real value applications.
Certainly at the enterprise level, the adoption of IP technology, with its possibilities for converged voice, video and data networks, is rapidly becoming the norm rather than the exception, making accessible a range of business technologies that may have only been affordable to large companies in the past, allowing for the cost-effective integration of systems. IP telephony seems like a logical step given that they already have an IP data network in place and it makes perfect sense to consolidate the network onto one platform.
Changing market landscape
According to specialist telecommunications analyst Market Clarity CEO Shara Evans, the technological developments of IP telephony over the last few years can best be characterised as evolutionary rather than revolutionary, with a focus more on stability and the ability to make systems that are more suitable to enterprise requirements. "Increasingly, we are seeing IP telephony as a platform that allows businesses to integrate multiple forms of communication (voice, email and video) into their mainstream applications. This has led to requirements for systems integration that incorporate the features and functionality of CRM and ERP systems with telephony and video," Evans said.
Two major breakthroughs that IDC analyst Suzanna Vidal has witnessed over the last two years have been the convergence of voice and data support people, which has greatly improved the understanding of each other's worlds, and a corresponding decline in equipment and services costs. "In the early days a network support guy might make a change to a router and not know they had just broken the voice path," she said. "From a business perspective, the price decline in the equipment and the increased integration of business applications with the communications systems is making the decision to migrate to IP more strategic than technical as it was before with traditional telephony equipment."
As a result of increased competition, a number of deployment models have emerged: a traditional PABX with VoIP media gateway (VoIP across the WAN), IP-enabled PABXs that support a combination of analog, digital and IP phones, soft PABXs/call managers that are designed to support IP phones, and in some cases, limited numbers of analog handsets and hosted IP telephony services. "The choice of deployment model is very much based on an organisation's readiness to deploy IP telephony, the ability of their LAN environment to support QoS, and the life cycle/amortisation of existing telephony equipment," Evans said.
Sydney-based IP telephony provider Efficient Data Communications managing director Andrew Lowy says his company has seen a huge surge in demand for the technology over the last six months, with EDC growing its staffing levels by 50% to cater for the demand. The explosion in the number of applications across IP networks has also been a major catalyst for that burgeoning demand, according to fellow Sydney-based IP telephony provider NSC chief executive Craig Neil. "IP telephony applications are now responsible for 28% of our total business, growing from a mere 11% 18 months ago.
According to IP telephony equipment vendor Avaya's head of convergence practice, South Pacific, Mark Duncan, the technology has moved forward on many fronts, particularly in the areas of architectural options, resilience, security and applications. Furthermore, the PC is now being used as the hub for communications. By way of example, Duncan said an end user could now 'pair' their PC to an IP phone and let the user choose how to communicate through the use of a softphone, a non-traditional handset. "Using a click to dial function from a Windows application, a user can simply click on a phone number in any web page and activate a voice call from their IP handset," Duncan said.
Overcoming remaining resistance
So what is holding back those that have yet to take the VoIP plunge and how valid are their concerns? NSC's Neil believes that VoIP in a controlled environment over a corporate WAN/LAN is very reliable, scalable and, in terms of quality, capable of .99999% reliability.
He does not, however, recommend companies placing calls over the public internet unless they are willing to accept the voice quality and congestion issues that go along with these calls. "For businesses considering VoIP implementations, we insist on carrying out a full audit of their WAN/LAN, which includes some technology testing equipment. In most cases, Neil said, they have had to change configurations and sometimes equipment to ensure a network is VoIP ready. Evans agreed that the main challenge today still relates to establishing quality of service both at the enterprise LAN and on its WAN connections.
Additionally, the enterprise has to ensure that all of the key components of the IP telephony system (such as call servers, gateways and so on) can be implemented with very high reliability and availability and that, as far as possible, its IP telephony system doesn't share server platforms with other corporate applications. "One of the key hurdles for many organisations is the need to QoS enable their LAN infrastructure. This means replacing hubs with switches, establishing separate VLANs for voice and data applications, adding resiliency to their LAN infrastructure down to the workgroup switch level and adding UPS systems. Ongoing VoIP performance monitoring and pre-installation testing is still the best way to help alleviate potential problems before they occur," Evans added.
IP equipment vendor Siemens Communications-Enterprise Group product marketing manager Mark Anderson believes the so-called "pitfalls" that still leave some businesses wary of going the IP voice path could relate more to ignorance than specific technology limitations. "It's a case of going into the process with one's eyes open. Some basic sanity checking of the network and subsequent implementation of recommendations can mean the difference between a disaster and a successful VoIP implementation. It's about knowing that the network has been dimensioned correctly, policy and routing rules put in place, with regular network checks to ensure the rules are effective that will keep the network integrity intact," Anderson said.
Chris Seaman, business development manager of IP telephony solutions provider 3D Networks, believes the most common pitfall made by businesses is the assumption that their existing network will support all of the requirements for a VoIP rollout. He argues that it is essential for any enterprise business looking at a VoIP implementation to engage a reputable systems integrator to assist them in the necessary investigation and pre-qualification phases.
For a company planning to install VoIP services and equipment over the next two years, Vidal recommends first taking a look at their growth plans in terms of headcount and then ascertain if the equipment they are buying will be able to scale in terms of that number of extensions over a period of five years. "I would also take a look at my current business processes and assess where the integration of the communications systems with some of these processes make sense and who can help me deploy those solutions," she said.
Is security still an issue?
A survey on enterprise VoIP uptake conducted by IDC at the end of last year found that only 3% of companies that had not yet deployed IP telephony listed security concerns as the reason for not yet investing in the technology. Indeed, as Market Clarity's Evans said, most customers are probably not really aware of the security issues related to VoIP, and most of the concerns arise from using the public internet as the service connection.
However, there are those like Anderson who believe that, with the mainstream uptake of VoIP, a whole new range of security issues have arisen that are still very much in the process of being addressed. He believes that any VoIP deployment must take into account the fact that IP networks are the target of hackers and virus developers and that businesses need to be aware that a major attack on the LAN or WAN infrastructure is going to severely affect data services. "Once you realise that an attack has the potential to take out voice communications, the problem takes on a very high profile. Failure to take this into account in the design program would be foolish."
Lowy agrees that network security has to be paramount for any business wanting to protect its private network. That is why, given that most VoIP deployments rely on a server platform, it is important that operating systems patches and virus protection are kept up to date. "The same fundamentals apply as with traditional data networks. Implement security policies, monitor access paths to your network for unauthorised access and continue to manage/update security policies based on new and emerging threats," Lowy said.
Crystal ball gazing
So just what will the enterprise VoIP market look like in two years' time? The market will continue to mature as older systems reach their use-by dates and companies upgrade to IP telephony systems as a matter of course.
Far from IP telephony for IP telephony's sake, it is the extensive range of business applications and benefits which are likely to continue VoIP's incursion into the traditional voice market. Return on investment, whilst easily justifiable at the moment, will continue to be delivered through improved communication and better collaboration throughout organisations. "Communication tools will be embedded into the applications we use and become universal across multiple communication devices from the PC to the desk phone to the mobile, providing one experience to the end user," Duncan said.
Neil is convinced that VoIP uptake will continue to grow rapidly as businesses continue en masse to migrate from PABX technology to IP telephony. "The big issues confronting the service providers will be how they can add value at the desktop. End users should benefit from the close application/integration that will take place between the telephone and desktop in the coming years." Issues surrounding standards at the desktop are also likely to come more sharply into focus, he added.
According to Evans, VoIP technology still has a long way to go before it can be considered seriously competitive to the PSTN. "Ultimately, VoIP will be fully mainstreamed when PSTN carriers use it as the foundation for their own telephony services, something which has started to happen, and will become increasingly common over the next five years or so."
