Businesses moving from a legacy phone system to a Voice-over-IP (VoIP) system should not take the decision lightly. As a recent industry article explains, they must consider vendors, product features, and employee needs before making the switch.
First, TechTarget says, businesses can list the features which they will need to complete work each day. First and foremost, VoIP comes with standard telephony and allows employees to communicate both in-office and outside the office on both desktop and mobile phones. It may also come with conferencing capabilities, call recording, presence, and linking to Web browsers for management of the network and individual phone configuration.
Once businesses have decided on the specific features they want, they can move to considering which phones will best support those features. Desktop phones may be enough, but they could look for mobile integration as well. Mobile could allow for conferencing from any location and presence that follows employees no matter where they are.
Then comes infrastructure. Some organizations may already have the infrastructure to support VoIP; others will need to utilize SIP trunking for that purpose. Vendors can usually handle both VoIP and SIP installation, and when speaking to vendors, businesses will also need to find out if they need media gateways, session border controllers, or analog telephone adapters, which can manage non-VoIP phones on a new network.
Businesses can purchase either from resellers or dealers, which act on behalf of a vendor, or directly from vendors themselves. Either way, they may also offer on-premise or cloud-based products that will each have their own advantages. On-premise VoIP may provide more control over the network but at a high setup cost and continued need for knowledgeable IT staff. On the other hand, cloud-based setups are usually cheaper to get started and will hand off server maintenance to the vendor.
It is important for businesses both large and small to consider these factors before investing in a VoIP plan. Although there are a lot of benefits for switching from legacy to VoIP systems, there is no reason to rush the matter. Making a detailed list of needs and considering multiple vendors is the way to go.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson