By John Moore
original source

Cost savings plus converged network efficiencies make an attractive case for IP telephony, even during a sluggish economy.

The benefits of Voice over Internet Protocol technology have long been known: lower equipment and maintenance costs and, by virtue of combining voice and data over a single network, simplified network management. Nonetheless, large enterprises have been slower to adopt the technology than small businesses.

In 2009, VoIP penetration among U.S. business was 42 percent, according to market research firm In-Stat. Industry experts say there are several reasons for the relatively slow adoption, especially among large businesses.

"Telephony has traditionally been held to a standard of five nines uptime — basically, 10 minutes of downtime per year — as well as having a very high level of voice quality," says Hyoun Park, telecom and unified communications research analyst at Aberdeen Group.

"There have been concerns in telecom departments about the ability to provide both of those metrics through Voice over IP," he says. "In addition, companies also worry about moving from a proprietary voice network that is particular to just carrying voice, to a converged network where voice becomes an application."

Making the Transition to VoIP

Large firms have also succumbed to the misconception that they must totally abandon current phone assets to adopt the new technology. Businesses with large telecom systems have made significant investments, so their turnover rate is likely to be much slower," says Jeff Ridley, director of product management at ShoreTel. And companies typically don't even start looking at VoIP until their circuit-switched Public Branch Exchange (PBX) system becomes cost prohibitive because of repairs and workarounds.