With all the talk about hosted telephony over recent years it’s no wonder some organizations feel sceptical about making the switch away from their current solution. Most organizations are inherently conservative and tend to adopt a “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mentality. Part of this mentality comes from inherent human stubbornness and preference for what we already know we like, another comes from a reluctance to spend money when it doesn’t seem necessary.
Business VoIP
Can Your IT Department Handle the Switch to VoIP on Their Own? (Pt 3)
Employee Training
First of all, you can have your IT employees trained to handle VoIP telephony. While we have a clear bias when it comes to this larger question, we admit that it’s certainly possible to train your IT staff to the point where they become proficient enough with the VoIP and Unified Communications technologies to run your PBX systems effectively and efficiently. Training is always an option, and when it comes to switching to IP telephony it can be a really good option, especially if you have a robust IT department that is already experienced in handling your existing phone system but needs to focus on the particulars of the system you’re considering.
Of course if you follow this course your employees should get training in the specific system you’re going to adopt both: as users and as administrators. This will hold true to any new communications system, bet it a hosted PBX or a premise-based system. In fact, regardless of where that system is located, the concepts and operating principles of any IP PBX are pretty much the same.
However, even with training of your IT staff your business may still require consulting assistance from a VoIP expert at some point during your implementation and perhaps later. For that reason outsourced Unified Communications solutions are gaining popularity.
Can Your IT Department Handle the Switch to VoIP on Their Own? (Pt 2)
While the desire to physically own and control the technology utilized in your organization’s telephony system is understandable it isn’t particularly easy to dismantle. The fact of the matter is it’s better to focus your organization’s space, resources and attention on the work your employees perform and not on optimizing and maintaining the infrastructure that keeps the lights on and the phone lines open.
Selective Outsourcing?
Think about all the elements of your organization’s infrastructure, all those elements existing purely to facilitate the production of the products and services your organization runs, and ask yourself if you would really want to be personally responsible for all of them, or whether you’re comfortable having someone else, a specialist group, take care of the “care and feeding” of those systems. It won’t take more than a minute of internal inquiry to realize the more infrastructure operations you can outsource the better- and that includes the infrastructure of your organization’s telephony system.
Yet just because you can easily discount the necessity of physically hosting your organization’s VoIP gear that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to write off the human element quite so easily. That is to say, even though you won’t think twice about sending the physical equipment running your phone systems to a remote location, you’ll probably have a difficult time taking the responsibility of running those systems out of your IT department’s hands.
We admit- the human element of switching to any new technology can be tricky to handle, especially if it involves downsizing within your organization or otherwise making one or more members of your IT department redundant.
There are a couple of different ways to approach this dilemma.
Will there be 1 Billion Mobile VoIP Users by 2017?
A report released at the end of 2012 seemed to point towards a very promising future for mobile VoIP, which is, roughly speaking, nothing more than VoIP services run on smartphones and tablets through apps like the one offered by Skype or Google Voice. The report was released by Juniper Research and it projected the mobile VoIP world would chalk up 1 billion total subscribers by 2017. This is a bold projection, one that seems to indicate VoIP is the future of mobile telephony, but many experts read the report and asked a simple question- “How many of those users will actually generate revenue for mobile VoIP provider?”
Will VoIP Taxes Become a Big Issue for IP Telephony?
Price is one of the biggest reasons why individuals and businesses may make the switch from traditional telephony services to IP telephony. Due to its increased scalability and efficiency, among other facts, it’s unlike IP telephony will ever cost as much as equivalent services from traditional telephony providers, yet the price of IP telephony may go up significantly in the future.
A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 2)
Now, let’s say you run into a best-case-scenario when it comes to the dollars-and-cents comparison of your switch to IP telephony. Your current provider continues to sell their services for twice as much as the IP telephony provider you decided to switch to. This is great, but saving a little money for your organization isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be, especially if you aren’t the final decision maker in your department.
Addition, Not Subtraction
Think about it this way- unless your department is already grossly over budget, or unless your department has been explicitly instructed to cut costs, saving money isn’t that big of a deal in-and-of itself. In the absence of immediate budgetary pressure decision makers aren’t looking to spend less. They’re looking to spend more and get more. Service improvements help them meet their ambitions, impress their bosses, and to otherwise get more done than they’re currently accomplishing.
A “Realistic” Picture of IP Telephony’s Cost Savings (Pt 1)
Price is a huge factor when it comes to deciding between sticking with traditional telephony services and making the jump to IP telephony. It’s one of the biggest selling points IP telephony providers use to push their technology, and it’s one of the clearest, firmest, more directly measureable ways decision-makers at an organization can see the benefit of switching over to IP. After all, while organizational flexibility and scalability are great benefits they can seem a little abstract, factors whose potential may be difficult to envision when a business is currently locked into a relatively fixed traditional telephony technology set-up.
Is non-Interconnected VoIP a de-facto “Communications Technology”?
There’s been a debate since the early days of non-interconnected VoIP over whether the technology counted as a bit of communications technology or an information technology. This sounds like a matter of semantics but legally speaking there’s a big difference between the two. Simply put information technology and communications technology are regulated differently and a whole lot of people fear non-interconnected VoIP is going to be named a communications technology and will start to face the same sort of regulation as the incumbent telecom players.
But here’s the thing- non-interconnected VoIP has pretty much already been named a communications technology, making it subject to a whole bunch of regulations that information technology finds itself immune from, some which non-interconnected VoIP has already begun to adopt.
Is Regulatory Creep Inevitable for VoIP?
The threat of regulation, to one degree or another, often seems inevitable for the VoIP market. This wasn’t always the case. In the very early days of VoIP it seemed like the communications technology would remain independent of governmental interference, largely due to its net-based nature. Yet as VoIP use grew over the years, and as it became increasingly clear how big a player VoIP was going to be in the larger telecom market, the notion of regulation began to seem more and more inevitable and, to some people, more and more necessary to ensure the normal, everyday telecommunications technologies of the future continue provide reliable service and access to emergency services, to name just a few avenues of concern for VoIP users and potential regulators.
Does FCC Ruling on Verizon Mean Free Tethering for All?
The FCC have not always been a force for good when it comes to making sure telecom companies provide the highest quality services at the reasonable prices. Traditionally the FCC has supported the telecommunication oligarchies that lead to a century of developmental stagnation and the continued dominance of a handful of telephony providers over an ever-expanding mobile-fueled empire.
Alright, alright… that sounds a little dramatic. The FCC often sides with larger telecommunication companies for the same reason governmental agencies across the board side with the big players in their respective industries:
- It’s easier for the government to communicate with a few massive organizations than many small companies.
- Large companies have the power and the resources needed to sustain long, effective lobbying efforts to pass through their policy opinions.
But no matter how loudly large companies may shout their opinions, and no matter how much money they funnel into their lobbying efforts, they don’t win every dispute, as evidenced by the recent FCC ruling on Verizon’s ban on third-party tethering applications.