May 2000

BY RAY RIOPEL

Voice over IP (VoIP) has started to prove itself as a means of cutting telecommunications costs but is there any real savings? Companies can tie their PBXs together over data lines using voice over IP equipment and provide better line utilization than if used over standard voice lines. One line can efficiently carry both voice and data traffic, and since you only need one circuit instead of two, you cut costs in half. Simple, right? Not so fast.

Once a company decides to implement VoIP, the big question becomes how do we make it work? If you are lucky enough to have a homogeneous PBX environment, you'll be able to implement the vendor's proprietary solution (if the vendor has one). Of course, these systems are not only incredibly expensive, they hook you further into the vendor's clutches. In today's business age of mergers and acquisitions, what happens when the acquired company doesn't have a compatible system? A forklift upgrade of either the switch or the VoIP system will be in order.

A MULTITUDE OF VARIABLES
But if your company is like most, you have a multitude of switches from various manufacturers, some of which require costly upgrades to handle VoIP natively. Now you have all sorts of issues surrounding integration and interoperability. To tie the switches together, you'll need VoIP gateways. Can you find a gateway that works with your PBX? Can it guarantee the five-nines uptime that your PBX gives you? Most gateways are PC-based, so how easy will it be to manage? Your telecom staff will need to be trained on how to operate this new piece of equipment.
The next major step for VoIP is going to be the move from the intranet-like (i.e., employee-to-employee) to the Internet/extranet-like (i.e., business-to-business and consumer-to-business). Just as Internet standards have allowed integration between heterogeneous computing environments, the same must take place in the VoIP market. It's important to choose hardware and software that supports the standards in place today, such as H.323. As the standards progress, these products will have the highest probability of maintaining compatibility.

VoIP will become an important business tool in the 21st century. Once consumers get their hands on broadband-speed, they'll be demanding not only VoIP but streaming video as well. Tomorrow's successful companies will start to include these technologies in their Internet and communications strategies.

Ray Riopel is director of technology, Edgewater Technology, Wakefield, MA. For more information, please visit their Web site at edgewater.com