[July 30, 2004]

VoIP: Can a Name Hurt the Growth of a Technology?

BY NEAL SHACT

That was my main thought as I left the panel I moderated at Supercomm. 

Rich Tehrani, President of TMC, and I, along with a star-studded panel, faced 400 audience members on the plenary session: How to take VoIP to the next level in the enterprise.  The general consensus from the panel was that it was going to need applications to get there. Where are the applications going to come from? Hint: if you are just looking at voice (as in VoIP) you may never find them.

We have all heard the basic cost justification models for voice over IP (VoIP) (define - news - alert - tutorial) by now.  There are powerful economics to converging voice and data onto a single network etc. and the ability to integrate multiple locations and keep the phone traffic on internal networks. Large-scale deployments still tend to be green field opportunities, yet it is largely a replacement market. 

Boeing’s recent decision to deploy a VoIP network has received much publicity.  Most of the large deployments announced thus far have one of two elements.  The first is that the companies already have state of the art data networks (it has been estimated that the data network preparation is often three times the cost of the voice component) and that the incremental cost of overlaying voice is minimal. The seconds is that the company has sophisticated internal staff that has been able to deploy a homegrown application with a compelling cost justification.  Herein lies the key to the opening question.

Looking for a killer app in voice, as in Voice over Internet Protocol, is going to be very difficult. The only ways to improve voice alone is to move it cheaper or improve the quality. 

VoIP is a simplistic label to describe packetized data of which voice is the most common application.  A more colorful description is multi-media, whether it is voice, data, text or image whatever is packetized can be transmitted easily over Internet Protocol. 

Once you start looking at moving multiple media around in new ways, you can really start uncovering major business solutions.  Don’t expect your vendors to be too much help here.  They don’t know your business well enough and the new solutions may include so many elements that you essentially become the systems integrator.

VoIP allows capabilities that are fundamentally different from that which could occur in the Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) world.  You don’t want to simply replace a  TDM phone system with a VoIP one unless you have outgrown the old system and need a new one.  New materials and technologies allow new business capabilities to be deployed.  Keith Weiner, DiamondWare President, likens this to when bridges started being built using metal instead of wood.  There was no reason to build them exactly the same way.  Using stronger, lighter and more flexible material allowed for the structure to be built in a new fashion while maintaining the same purpose.

Take for example, a somewhat new, VoIP help desk application that is being deployed at a major company with tens of thousand of employees. Users needing help dial into the help desk number where they are greeted by voice recognition based IVR system.  The request is funneled into a SIP based, multimedia back end.  Either web pages that address the user’s need or self-help videos are stored there.  Since the incoming call is identified at the specific desk locations, appropriate help instruction can be pushed to the appropriate PC.  

Is the above scenario VoIP? Voice is only a small part of this application.  Recently fax and video over IP vendors have started embracing the term VoIP rather than launch into a lengthy explanation of how they have packetized technologies that transmit using the same protocol as voice. 

It is time to phase out the awkward, non-user friendly term VoIP and use something more accurate. 

PIP (Packet over Internet Protocol) anyone?