Business VoIP Featured Article

VoIP Cost Savings and 'Rich Integration' of Business Communication

March 04, 2011

By David Sims, Business VoIP Contributing Editor

According to a recent piece from Broadband Finder, firms that switch to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) communications “may be able to reduce their communications budgets.”


The site which helps customers compare competing British offerings, noted that VoIP technology provides a "rich integration" of business communication, according to PlanetMagpie. This, of course, fits in with the experience of most firms who’ve switched to Business VoIP. It would be difficult to list three good reasons to switch to VoIP without having “lower costs” somewhere on there.

The IT consultancy and managed IT service provider offered other reasons for companies to consider a switch, saying Business VoIP can boost productivity in the workplace as well. Robert Douglas, president of PlanetMagpie, says while newer VoIP offerings are more efficient, “costs have not increased as a result... While you would expect that the cost would go up by adding this level of functionality, prices for hosted VoIP have stayed the same or have gone down in most cases.”

Douglas attributed the benign pricing “largely to virtualization and reduced communication line costs. A cost that's often overlooked is the productivity loss associated with slow responses to e-mails."

The increase in firms moving from time-division multiplexing (TDM) to internet protocol (IP) is boosting the recovery of the enterprise telephony and unified communications market as well, according to Infonetics Research, which issued a report cited by Broadband Finder, showing that the sector was up by 7.4 per cent at the end of 2010, in comparison to the third quarter.

Last month TMC’s Laura Stotler wrote that PlanetMagpie, a San Francisco-area IT consulting agency, was increasing its footprint to gear up for an expected explosion in cloud services.

The company built a larger building last year, and has introduced private cloud services to meet growing IT demand. The company provides custom IT consulting, web development, network support and managed IT services for small to mid-sized enterprises.

"Companies have to move forward now. I moved us up here so we'd have more server space to meet the demand, and a better location to reach customers all throughout the Bay Area," said Douglas.


Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for virtual-pbx and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.

Edited by Charles West

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