There was a time when VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) phone systems were simply a cheap telephony option for businesses wanting to slash their toll bills.

That approach was so last century, say vendors. IP telephony is now mainstream – business IP handset sales now outnumber sales of traditional handset – and the corporate IP network is increasingly seen as the backbone of a company-wide, productivity-boosting unified communications solution.

Craig Donaghy, Cogent’s national channel and product strategy manager, says while toll bypass was the main driver for early VoIP adopters, today’s business case around IP telephony is quite different.

“The cost savings that businesses are looking to see now from IP telephony deployment are around things like going to a single network from running a disparate set of networks,” says Donaghy.

“The ability to run voice and data over a single platform and the associated admin costs that are reduced through doing that is clearly a major cost saving that our customers are looking for.”

Enterprises running several call centres in different loca- tions are attracted to IP’s ability to create a much more cohesive single “virtual” call centre. Using an IP-based system, inbound calls can be routed to the expert best capable of handling them, no matter where that staff member may happen to be.

That type of skills-based routing is one of the many productivity boosting solutions available through an IP-based unified communications deployment.

May 2007

Image courtesy Telecom IP Voice

Presence, the ability to check a co-workers location and availability before you call them, is a major selling point for unified communications, as anyone who spends much of their day playing telephone tag will appreciate.

“Presence is really important to the whole unified communications story because we’re improving the way people communicate,” says Robbie Krugger, chief technical officer for Avaya in the Asia-Pacific region.

“I can see before I even call you whether you’re available. I can see your status – whether you’re in a meeting or you’re interruptible or you’re on the phone.”

For corporates running multiple work sites, or with large numbers of mobile workers, the collective loss of productivity as a result of staff trying to track each other down over the phone can be significant.

“There are reasonably well proven stats now around the efficiencies that can be gained from a properly designed and deployed unified communications infrastructure and applications,” says Paul Mitchener, network sales manager for Hewlett Packard in New Zealand.

Image courtesy Telecom IP Voice

Mitchener says while video calling hasn’t yet reached its full potential in the local market, he expects it will become increasingly popular as corporates embrace the potential benefits of video conferencing and video collaboration over desktop PCs or laptops.

“In an IP context video conferencing now becomes a lot more flexible and convenient compared to in the past when you had to go to a spe- cial room and had to set it up,” says Mitchener. In general, it is a desire for simplification that is driving unified communications uptake. The “single mailbox” concept behind unified messaging – allowing staff to pick up all their voice and data messages through one access point – has growing appeal for corporates, especially as staff spend more time communicating out of the office.

Image courtesy Telecom IP Voice

“Eighty-five per cent of our customer base wants to talk to us about mobility and mobility integration – in other words the ability to have a mobile phone that has PBX functionality on it so they’re not tethered by a curly cord to their desk,” says Cogent’s Donaghy.

Avaya’s Krugger says as well as offering PBX functionality on a mobile phone – meaning staff have the ability, for example, to transfer calls from their mobile to desk extensions – one of unified communication’s great strengths is its ability to integrate with key desktop applications such as Lotus Notes or Microsoft Office.

“Today it’s quite an easy process to integrate your communications environment with your business applications – your Microsoft environment, your Lotus Notes environment and any other associated tools you use on your desktop,” says Krugger.

“It’s all becoming very seamless to do now and it’s all done through open interfaces as well.” Integration with other applications such as CRM or ERP systems can also offer big productivity gains. Call centre staff, for example only need to make a single mouse click to dial a number using their CRM database.

A “soft phone” application on a PC or laptop offers another powerful productivity tool and potential cost saver for regular travellers. A staff member connecting from an overseas hotel room via a virtual private network, for example, can access their company’s full PBX services through their laptop, enabling them to cut down on expensive global roaming charges.

Shaan Stevens, who runs international consultancy Guinness Gallagher, recently installed a Vadacom VadaXchange Lite PABX in his Wellington home office. The portability and lack of expense of using a PC based soft phone has enabled him to better keep track of his affairs back in the office while overseas. “Here I am in Cambodia taking and making phone calls as if I am on my office extension, who would have thought it was possible. The quality of the call is better than using my landline. I don’t think my staff expected to hear from me as much as they have.” So the functionality is great, but can the cost of moving to IP and unified communications be justified?

Image courtesy Telecom IP Voice

Cogent’s Donaghy says most of the company’s customers don’t opt for a full “rip and replace” IP deployment, preferring the more cost-effective option of upgrading parts of their traditional telecommunications network (TTN) as required.

“What they’re wanting to do is take advantage and ‘sweat the asset’ on their TTN investment,” he says.

“They therefore go to a hybrid deployment, taking the best of what they’ve got, upgrading it where possible to get IP functionality into their business using as much of their existing infrastructure as possible.”

Telecom’s business manager for enabling collaboration, Hugh McKellar, says corporates need to be aware that an IP deployment will involve some degree of staff training to achieve its full benefits. “You do need to be conscious that there’s going to be some sort of integration or transition from what you have been on to the new technologies,” McKellar says.

“The good thing is you know you’re not going down a cul-de-sac. You can see that it is a technology that is well embedded around the world. It’s not like you’re at the bleeding edge of anything, it’s well established now, both from an IP and network perspective.”

Some early VoIP users suffered quality of service issues but improvements both in the technology and bandwidth availability now mean quality to the level required for such a business-critical activity is now readily available.  “The base level of reliability is a whole lot better than it was even 18 months ago,” says McKellar.

While unified communication’s potential is best realised in the enterprise-level business, there is growing interest from the small to medium (SME) market, says Tony Jayne, general manager of Avaya reseller Agile New Zealand.

Image courtesy Telecom IP Voice

Cecil Alexander, chief executive of telco company WorldExchange Communications, says the company offers a feature-rich IP solution to small businesses which can be run over a single broadband connection.

Alexander says IP telephony will become an even more attractive option for small businesses with the arrival of naked DSL (broadband without an associated phone line rental) as part of the Government’s telecommunications reforms.

“Most of our clients make their decision based on how much money they can save,” explains Vadacom CEO Igor Portugal. “Before the other productivity advantages are even considered, people need to know that such a cost is justified. A $10,000 phone system can be rented for about $230 per month, meaning that with a $230 monthly saving on tolls the system is paying for itself.

“This can be achieved through either linking multiple offices together via an IP network, or by using some of the new VoIP Internet based phone lines, provided by the likes of CallPlus, Compass Communications and Woosh. These new telecommunications providers have the capability to significantly reduce the prices on toll calls - not just by the few percentage points available from Telecom or TelstraClear resellers, but up to 80% in some instances.”

“The real question is not about the cost of implementing a VoIP system for a small business, but the cost of not doing so,” says Guiness Gallaghers Stevens.

“My toll costs have dropped dramatically and the savings will soon pay off my capital investment, meanwhile I have a high quality service.” In another application, Vadacom is also being used by cinema management software company Vista. The majority of Vista’s clients are overseas, and support calls are a costly exercise. With VadaXchange, Vista are able to provide a service to some clients which means that they have an IP extension on Vista’s phone system. This means that once they are on this service they can make support calls to Vista for free over the Internet.

Agile’s Jayne says the company has been working with Microsoft on integrating Microsoft’s CRM software for small enterprises with the Avaya SME IP platform.

“That’s proving to be very popular in the SME space because it provides those organisations with a degree of professionalism which has only been possible previously in the enterprise space. ‘Click to call’ integrated into the CRM for a 20 or 30 person organisation provides huge productivity.”

For more information, vendors, resources and case studies visit the Unified Communications/VoIP Research Pavilion