In This Part

Strategic direction of VoIP carriers and vendors Feature-rich alternative to conventional telephony Investment protection of existing systems Seamless maintenance and management Flexibility and portability Compelling applications Real-time collaboration Increased bandwidth utility Real-time network management Reduced telephony and videoconferencing costs

he reasons to switch to VoIP are countless, depending on how far you want to project the future of the marketplace. For now, here are the ten best reasons to make the switch.

Strategic Direction of VoIP Carriers and Vendors

Over the next few years, much of the $300 billion per year telecommunications industry will be migrating its equipment and carrier services to support IP Telephony on the LAN side and packetized VoIP services on the WAN. It will not be long before the current conventional telephony systems providers are outdated.

As older providers lose customer base and revenue, they will streamline operations and eventually close their doors. The providers that stay in business will need to increase prices and therefore will become non-competitive. As a result, IP Telephony and VoIP networking technology has become today the strongest influencer in the telecommunications provider marketplace.

Avaya has emerged as a worldwide leader in secure and reliable IP telephony systems, communications software applications, and full life-cycle services. Avaya’s leading role relates to many innovations and industry differentiators. These include:

VoIP migration strategy that leverages existing and new networks to protect traditional systems investments and avoids “forklift upgrades.”

Communication network market share penetration that includes over 90 percent of today’s Fortune 500 companies.

Expertise and core product line that migrates and builds converged communications networks versus computer networks that happen to run voice applications.

Industry leader in the product and features roll-out of Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) related applications.

Over one million businesses worldwide rely on Avaya solutions and services to enhance value, improve productivity, and gain competitive advantage.

Feature-Rich Cost-Effective Alternatives

Most traditional POTS-PSTN telephony calling features have made their mark on the industry. They have become familiar to all of us. Leading the charge are features such as voicemail, call transfer, call forwarding, and three-way calling. The costs of these features are either rolled into the cost of your com-pany’s private telephony system, or you pay for them a la carte or as part of a bundle based on the individual line to the carrier company. IP telephony and VoIP clearly make the “wireline service” related features out-of-date. All the traditional telephony features as well as many new features and communications applications are available in the IP-enabled world of converged communications. The number and type of IP Telephony and VoIP calling features are overwhelming and compelling. And they all come with no additional cost because they are IP-based and are carried over the computer network. They are more like computer applications that operate and run like well, computer applications.

Simple effective features, such as being able to look at your telephony station and see a visual indicator that tells you whether someone in your calling group is “present” but at the moment on the telephone, go far and above any feature that a POTS-related system can deliver. Think how many times you wasted time over POTS telephony calling someone only to get a busy signal or their voicemail not knowing whether they were at their desk or not. The Presence feature is just one of many features available in the IP-converged communications world.

Or how about the ability to run IP Softphone software on your computer and doing telephony using a point-and-click process with a headset — talk about integrating the telephone with your computer! This capability could never be contemplated in the POTS world because it could not support computer-related applications in a seamless manner.

In a POTS world, separate systems had to be maintained to manage who was in the system and what their profiles were, known as the translation. The POTS telephony expert, depending on the system used by the company, has to gather this data on the user and key it into the POTS telephony systems of choice. The same information for the most part needs to be duplicated on the computer data network.

In the IP-converged communications world, most if not all of this type of information can be entered once and maintained in a uniform manner. Whether the company uses an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software based approach or some other variation of Database Management Systems (DBMS), it can be integrated through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with all related application systems in the company as needed, including now all IP Telephony and VoIP systems.

VoIP Investment Protection

Most organizations today have one or more traditional telephony system models in place, or they have entirely or partially migrated to IP Telephony and VoIP to support their enterprise. If you have existing digital equipment (such as PBX with digital telephone stations), you can protect your investment by reusing most if not all of your equipment with VoIP.

Maintaining VoIP Seamless

Because of a foundation that eradicates duplication and redundant information systems, the major tasks of installing and managing IP telephony and VoIP become more cohesive. Managers have more effective and direct applications to support their many challenges. They can manage not only computer data applications, but IP-based telephony and video-conferencing systems, as well. Unified database applications running over the network provide real-time, seamless access to all information needed to maintain the VoIP network.

Moves, adds, and changes formerly requiring highly complex and costly resources and changes do not require the manager to do anything. The VoIP network automatically adjusts itself to accommodate the user’s new location. Usage, accounting, and other metrics data are available to the manager through any computer device attached to the network. With IP-based converged communications, managing and maintaining the network become cost-effective and seamless. Staff do not get caught up in problems and stay focused on business deliverables.

Flexibility and Portability

IP Softphone is an IP telephone client for Windows-based PCs. It provides transparent access to real-time communications and productivity-enhancing features. It offers simple point-and-click dialing. Through wireless extension to cellular, users have never had more telephone options for mobility available to them. For example, wireless extension to cellular enables the Follow Me feature. Employees can have calls ring at both their office and cellular telephones so they never miss a call.

With IP Softphone for Pocket PC, employees can make and receive calls via the IP network with no recurring charges.

In an IP-converged communications network, any employee in the company can travel to any of the company’s locations, plug in his or her IP-enabled laptop, begin work, and make and receive telephone calls. Employees have at these distant, temporary locations all of the rich features available to them at their home office locations. The network automatically identifies the user and applies that user’s profile information in the company controlling database. Employees can even direct their calls to any digital desktop telephone at the temporary locations (the telephone does not even have to be IP-enabled). Absolutely no one needs to be called or notified that this user is connecting at this remote location. Managers no longer have to make costly and time-consuming accommodations for computer data and telephony connections for a coworker who is visiting your location.

Compelling Applications

If as a manager you remain unconvinced about VoIP with reduced overall operating expenses, increased and enhanced productivity, seamless integration of data, voice and video systems, unified controlling database that converges the need to maintain multiple databases into just one, increased mobility calling features that save time and money, then perhaps nothing will convince you to start your company’s move toward VoIP.

But just in case you are on the fence and not sure which way to go, consider the emergence of the industry-leading Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) which is enabling many new features and applications all designed to make the employee more agile and mobile with information technology. Avaya once again has emerged as the industry leader with SIP technology applications. For example, the Presence Detection, Follow Me, and seamless Moves, Adds, and Changes (MAC) application features of the IP converged communications network are just a sample of the many new SIP applications. These features make IP Telephony and VoIP a truly valuable time-saving network service and increase employee productivity. SIP is one of the many cool IP developments that come with the IP converged communications network.

A user on an Avaya IP communications network with multiple devices like a cell phone, desk phone, PC Client, and PDA can rely on SIP to seamlessly integrate these entities. With SIP, the days of having to remember multiple voice-mail access codes or hardware addresses are over. SIP can logically integrate all of these codes and addresses through the IP communications network as if they are one device. SIP redefines productivity.

Increased Network Management

IP-based communication networks provide a foundation for comprehensive network management. As a result, the ability for you to manage every bit and byte that runs over your IP telephony LAN and your VoIP WAN has never been more enabled.

Likewise, you have at your disposal tools such as Avaya’s EXPERT Systems Diagnostics Tools that find and fix network issues so quickly that managers rarely know anything at all happened. These types of tools can support local and remote network monitoring. In dedicated networks, five 9’s quality is provided (99.999%). That’s not to say that problems never occur, but in an IP-converged network environment, your ability to detect symptoms and make changes to your setup in advance of any problems that might befall your IP communications network is greatly enhanced.

Real-Time Collaboration

If you are still unconvinced, consider the fact that VoIP is IP-based and many of the Web applications that previously ran exclusively over the Internet will now run over your private IP-based network. Many Web-based HTML applications are portable to your company’s IP-based communication network. Your users can have their favorite Web page riding on their IP telephone. Or they can post special Web links on their telephone-based Web page. Many of the Web-HTML based applications are candidates for running with your IP telephones.

Users can add Video Telephony Solution powered by IP video application software that enables a desktop PC or laptop to emulate an IP office phone. The quality of this video and audio that runs on the company’s network versus the Internet is free from the latency and jitter you see when running video and audio over the Internet.

Better Use of Available Bandwidth

Many people wrongly assume that when you add IP Telephony and VoIP to an enterprise computer network, you won’t have enough bandwidth available to support the change. The fact of the matter is that dedicated network transports supporting computer data on traditional telephony systems are generally about 30 percent utilized. Even though converged networks that add IP Telephony and VoIP increase overall network traffic volume, you must look at how the IP based traffic operates.

On the LAN side, fault isolation provided through the switching equipment maintains a steady mode of operation. If any chokepoints are identified, they can be remedied almost immediately by changing connection points or doing what the gurus call load balancing. But your IP-based management system will tell you this before it even becomes a problem.

On the WAN side, the load needs more consideration. You usually have more than one site on the WAN side that may have users connecting to your site. In addition, the cost and overall bandwidth capacity of the WAN transports are higher and recur monthly when compared to LAN side Ethernet that is usually a one-time cost investment. Also, the bandwidth capacity of dedicated transports is usually measured on the basis of how many Digital Service Channels (DS0s) are possible.

A T-1 line, for example, has 24 DS0s and is among the most popular dedicated transports in the corporate world. If you run circuit-switched POTS-PSTN calls over the T-1, you can keep up 24 simultaneous telephony calls. (The LEC will still charge you for 24 POTS line equivalents.) However, the beauty of VoIP is that it is packetized and streams the packets in through the T-1 line over one fraction of one DS0 channel’s bandwidth. As a result, you gain multiple times the bandwidth equivalent with VoIP when compared to POTS-PSTN on the WAN side.

Reduced Telephony and Videoconferencing Costs

The cost reduction argument is compelling from a couple of perspectives. The argument is never more persuasive, however, than it is for companies that have a substantial volume of local toll, intralata, intrastate, and/or interstate toll charges. All of these toll billing areas have recurring minute charges and regulatory fees. The big showdown area of toll service charges today is no longer in the realm of interstate carrier services. These costs have gotten down to as low as 2 cents per minute, and even this rate can be leveraged against overall minute volumes to define a lower per minute rate — below 1 cent per minute.

IP Telephony and VoIP can reduce local charges. This is a good thing. But VoIP also reduces or eliminates regional or local toll carrier services charges. This is a great thing. Depending on the number of locations your company may have and over how many intralata boundaries your current calling plans cover, you can save millions of dollars per month by converting to VoIP across the enterprise. This savings is mainly because if you put all your locations on VoIP, all their intralata (local or regional toll) on-net calls travel over your company’s computer network. In this way, all these calls bypass the regulated, wireline carrier services of the conventional telecommunications carrier companies.

If your organization has significant international calling, the same argument applies except that your company can save even more toll and regulatory costs. International toll charges are the most heavily regulated.