It was once assumed that only the larger enterprises could afford to invest in innovative solutions that allowed for next generation communications. Yet adoption across the VoIP industry shows that the deployment of IP phones is beneficial for underserved small businesses as well.

In fact, the small business often lacks the resources to support a large infrastructure and IT staff to support innovative technologies. The application of IP connections eliminates this constraint and allows the small business to function at the level of its giant counterparts. For the large, distributed organization, it provides a way to consolidate the infrastructure and reduce costs.

Across the board, these organizations are better able to efficiently manage vendor relationships, provide a consistent set of features across the organization and deliver communications capabilities to various locations according to user need instead of the technology available on the backend. Leveraging IP phones allows these companies to replace the need for deployments that require large capital outlays and instead invest in solutions that are charged instead per user or per line.

Before deciding on making any kind of change, however, the organization of any size has to assess their existing communications infrastructure and the skill set of the IT staff, review the objectives of the business and develop a roadmap for sustainability in their communications infrastructure evolution. The findings from this phase allow the business to conduct a thorough investigation on the availability of hosted communications providers and their supported solutions.

It’s common to begin this process with a comparison of features and functions with costs across a variety of platforms. Decision makers are likely to assess the ease of use for IT administrators and end users to ensure the selected deployment strategy and supported solutions are more efficient, offer a wider array of solutions, can support advanced new tools and capabilities and meet with a wide array of communications needs.

While deployment options will be examined, quality and reliability also need to be assessed for each strategy and the vendors under consideration. Service Level Agreements (SLAs) put forth by the provider must also be examined to determine whether or not they are strong enough to sustain the organization’s long-term strategy.  At the same time, the data center design, solutions architecture and other factors that can impact reliability and security must also enter into the consideration process.

Finally, the total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis must be completed, as well as a full analysis of short- and long-term value assessments for the solutions, the supported IP phones and any other service involved. Only with all questions answered and all pertinent information provided can the business make a qualified decision to move forward with a solution that will sustain for the long-term.