Project Guide: Is It Time for VOIP
<<<... Separately, Southern has also installed 600 desktop IP phones from Siemens in its new downtown Atlanta headquarters, which opened this fall. Why not cut over every office to IP telephony? "It's a time and resource issue," LaCorti says. In other words: For most of Southern's employees, the benefits of the technology don't fully justify the expense. Internet-protocol telephony can be a difficult sell, because its major advantages are often invisible to employees—from the rank-and-file up to the CEO. IP phones may not appear to work any better, or differently, than the old ones. As a result, few companies view the technology as a bust-the-budget innovation that will give them a jump on the competition. "For the most part, IP phones have been used as just another phone," says Zeus Kerravala, an analyst with Yankee Group. "The value proposition for IP telephony right now isn't strong enough that companies will take a two-year-old legacy phone system and throw it out the window." He points out that the growth of IP telephony sales closely matches the rate at which organizations replace their old circuit-switched systems. Another inhibitor: Wide-scale rollouts require big capital outlays. Average IP telephony hardware costs for companies with 1,000 or more employees were $488 per user, according to a 2005 survey of 65 information-technology executives by Nemertes Research, a business and technology consulting firm in New York. So where does IP telephony make sense? Such systems can, and do, save money. They can cut telecommunications bills by eliminating the need for separate voice lines from a service provider. more >>>