Project Guide: Is It Time for VOIP
<<<... And customer service agents now are able to work outside the corporate call centers, since the Cisco system can send calls over any IP network. In fall 2005, Pulte Mortgage opened a new call center in Charlotte, N.C., to serve East Coast customers, and outfitted the location with Cisco telephony gear. Kelly's team configured the network to route calls across the country if the Colorado centers go down. Says Kelly: "IP telephony has helped us save money, and it's given us business-continuity capabilities." Today, many large organizations feel comfortable that Internet-protocol telephony has become as rock-steady as traditional voice systems. The Boeing Co., for one, is in the second year of a 160,000-phone rollout with IP telephone equipment from Cisco; Boeing expects to complete the project by 2011 (see "Jumbo Overhaul"). Still, analysts say most enterprises are using IP phone technology selectively—in a new office building, for instance. About 20 percent of all enterprise phone systems were IP-based in 2004, according to research from the Telecommunications Industry Association trade group. Consider the experience of Southern Co. The Atlanta-based power utility has deployed IP telephony at 50 of its 500 remote office locations since 2001. Typically, the company's telecommunications connections are split 50-50 between voice and data traffic. In certain offices, the voice half wasn't being used efficiently. By sending voice over a single data pipe at its IP telephony locations, Southern avoided having to upgrade to faster lines as more and more data was transmitted over them, says Tom LaCorti, the company's principal information-technology architect. "We wanted to use our network bandwidth better," he says. more >>>