TMCnews Featured Article
May 11, 2011
ITIL Offers Potential in VoIP Management
By Susan J. Campbell, TMCnet Contributing Editor
As more and more companies make the change to all-IP environments, the demand for moving voice communications over the network as VoIP is growing. And, with the draw of Unified Communications (News - Alert), combined with the enabling technology of IP telephony, there is a massive convergence taking place.
As captured in this white paper, there are rapid and significant advances within these technologies. At the same time, however, many enterprises have yet to fully embrace the alignment of these two worlds. There is a lack of proper VoIP management as project lifecycles continue to evolve individually, which yields separate terminology, priorities and methodologies.
The scenario is likely to continue on this path as different skill-sets and backgrounds continue to contribute to the separation of the two worlds as simply an operational necessity in large enterprises. The good news is that while these two world are unique, that does not have to serve as an obstacle to the Unified Communications vision. VoIP management can be introduced to combine next generation policies and technologies with best practices to bridge the divide.
This bridge is becoming essential as voice and data continue to converge under the umbrella of the technology-enabled business. There is an emerging consensus in VoIP management that voice should be viewed as another application under the overall IT purview, and with it, communications groups will benefit as they adopt workflow best practices.
One strong area that could improve VoIP management is the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). This set of best practices helps to create a high-level IT services workflow that will accommodate both existing environments. While this concept was first created in the 1980s, it did not reach mainstream IT until the 1990s. Since that time, this form of control has become the standard for IT service delivery across a number of industries. With the right focus in place, it could also help to facilitate VoIP management across the board.
A number of IT managers, whether they have a focus on VoIP management or not, have embraced ITIL as it provides the best practice-based framework that centers on integrating and centralizing incident management, problem management, configuration management and change management. Companies of all sizes stand to benefit from this approach as ITIL allows them to leverage the best practices according to their own unique environment.
There is considerable opportunity for ITIL in VoIP management as the standard has been virtually non-existent in IP telephony. As companies and IT managers strive for total VoIP management and quality voice delivery, the drive toward ITIL adoption is sure to follow.
Susan J. Campbell is a contributing editor for TMCnet and has also written for eastbiz.com. To read more of Susan’s articles, please visit her columnist page.
Edited by Juliana Kenny
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