Enterprise VoIP is making inroads among enterprises that cling to their circuit switched voice networks. The lure of Enterprise IP voice is having a single network to serve all modes of communication. Enterprise VoIP is making inroads among enterprises that cling to their circuit switched voice networks. The lure of Enterprise IP voice is having a single network to serve all modes of communication. Enterprise VoIP introduces efficiencies into the network, and allows for tighter integration. Certainly from the supply side, we can see that Enterprise IP voice is taking off. Enterprise IP voice is still in the early stages of adoption, but is starting to move into the mainstream.

Awareness of Enterprise VoIP is winning over companies for its ease of use/manageability, flexibility and operational cost. Ease of use and manageability get high ratings because Enterprise IP voice equipment overcomes the hassle of performing mundane telecom tasks. For example, to change a user's location within the building in a TDM world while maintaining the user's current extension, physical changes would have to be made to the network. For companies that don't have qualified staff, they need to pay for a service call. In an Enterprise IP world, user identity is coupled to the phone's MAC address, and not to a particular port, so a user can simply pack their desk phone, plug it into the LAN port at the new desk, and be up and running. The convenience of Enterprise VoIP is a huge selling point.

Other drivers propelling Enterprise VoIP include scalability and the desire to consolidate voice and data networks. Implementing multiple wide area networks is expensive, and complexity increases as the number of networks and sites grows. Large organizations seek network convergence, and Enterprise VoIP is the way to get there.

Consumer adoption of VoIP services may also spill over into the enterprise VoIP world, as was the case with wireless LANs.

Once people get used to advanced features available at home--for example, visual voicemail--they may end up pushing for the same capabilities of at work. For companies that are deploying Enterprise IP voice, the advantages outweigh the barriers. The initial cost of deploying Enterprise VoIP technology are capital expenses. There are also some technical hurdles to adopting Enterprise VoIP although in the long run, the future of Enterprise VoIP is assured.

By Johnny Mayer