VoIP: Taking the next step

SMBs are looking for hybrid solutions, instead of pure play IP telephony, in a bid to protect their initial investment and minimise migration angst. They were also keen to get their hands on managed or hosted services given the lack of IT expertise in-house, Li said.

The latest round of carrier moves to launch VoIP offerings to the SMB arena would fuel market adoption, she said.

The SMB space was one of the fastest growing areas for Avaya, its regional channel account manager of SMB, Gavin Milton-White, said.

"In a single site, you may have IP for some handsets, a hard or softphone, and an analogue phone for the warehouse. It is popular to mix and match the technology," he said.

In a bid to cater to demand, the vendor recently rolled out the IP 500, which is targeted to the sub-20 space. "The IP office is a rich system that is targeted to as low as two users; it's for what we're calling the very small business (VSB). It can scale up to 272 users," Milton-White said.

He said 90 per cent of businesses fall into the SMB category, with a good chunk in the sub-100 category. Many had grappled with older infrastructure and legacy gear and found IP telephony costs prohibitive. But with the rollout of the latest SMB gear, and the developments with Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), smaller companies would be able to justify the expense of upgrading the network.

"We're going to see SIP trunk relevant this year," Milton-White said. "It gives customers a single data pipe in the office: the phone lines [which can be virtual] and Internet access all on the single pipe so there's big cost savings.

"It will be dramatic for resellers and customers and accelerate the adoption of IP telephony. Tier one carriers such as Optus and Telstra will launch SIP trunk, which will cut the phone bill in half. We'll start to see momentum in the SMB space build in the next six months." With call costs cut in half, it frees up money for an SMB to justify the network upgrade expense or push to get IP ready.

In addition to cheaper phone calls, SMBs wanted to link IP telephony with other applications in a bid to get greater business productivity, Milton-White said. System Status is such a tool. It gives users a realtime snapshot of the phone system and monitors it. "It's two o'clock and the phone line is busy, so how do you manage it? Do you bring more staff in? These are the types of IP telephony management tools being embraced by SMBs," he said.

Preparing for unification
While large enterprise is already well along the IP telephony path, and are convinced of the preliminary benefits (cheaper phone calls being a big one), partners can sweeten the pot and get them ready for a unified communications environment.

Gartner said UC remained a hot topic among clients and vendors, but the focus was on how to make a business case for it over the next 12-18 months. The analyst firm suggested companies review their communication systems and processes, and then undertake pilots or trials that could lead to improved processes.

Nortel VoIP product and marketing specialist, Mitch Radomir, said the industry had moved away from simply wanting telephony applications to demanding more integrated communication features and an all-in-one approach.

"It's no longer about key telephony features, but communications with a telephony mix," Radomir said. The company's Communication Server 1000 provides the benefits of a converged network plus advanced applications and more than 750 telephony features. It supports business-critical applications including unified messaging, customer contact centre, interactive voice response (IVR), wireless VoIP and IP phones.

While there's lots of UC product on the market, IDC's Li said large enterprise was still in the decision-making phase and considering its options.

"There are lots of offerings, but it's still confusing," she said.

NSC's Neil agreed the industry was still making the business case for UC. But as more and more users get hooked on the click-to-call and integrated communication functionality, the market will hot up.

"It's an interesting time. There's a lot of discussion, but not a lot of deployments," he said.

The system integrator's first customer, a financial company with 1000 users, is using an Avaya call centre and PABX system integrated to the Microsoft Outlook network, along with an Avaya messaging platform linked to Microsoft Active Directory.

While NSC was making a large commitment to the whole concept of UC - it is rolling out Microsoft OCS throughout the company - Neil said he was still slightly pessimistic about where the market would go. "IT people love this, think it's the best thing since sliced bread, but the board members are saying, 'Show me the ROI'," he said.

His company is involved in a five-city road show this month with Avaya and Microsoft in a bid to get the UC message out. Neil said lots of education is needed on where and how the IP telephony bit fits into the equation. "There are challenges. It's more involved than first thought. There's lots of integration and a number of licenses from Avaya and Microsoft to consider," he said. "There are server considerations, and questions about whether the user has the latest version of Outlook or Exchange."

While the UC concept has been around for a while, the Microsoft integration piece was new and would fuel market adoption, Neil said.

"We'll know by Christmas how popular the UC technology is. It will give us a good indication," he said.

Customer preference
3D Networks CEO, Chris Luxford, said the majority of customers were purchasing IP telephony with a view to eventually getting UC in the next 3-5 years.

eal estate group, Mirvac, is the exception to the rule, however. It recently sunk its teeth into a unified communications solution for its new office complex, and is the first 3D Networks customer to deploy the Nortel/Microsoft product mix. The rollout aims to deliver significant benefits in the area of time communications between geographically dispersed business units and facilitate efficient business collaboration. In order to sell both VoIP and more comprehensive UC solutions, Luxford said essential integration skills included expertise with data, voice, applications and the management of the desktop.

"It's a change for some partners to think about the business holistically. You need to know the ins and outs of the data network, the security, the data networking and storage networking," he said.

"Help an organisation understand which pieces of UC will get them an ROI. Unified communications touches so many more parts of the business than a simple phone system or a standalone infrastructure.

You have to consider the data network, the applications, the desktop, the data centre, and maybe doing a full network refresh."

Ane while there's lots of UC hype, Luxford said there was widespread market confusion. "Customers are skeptical, and they rightly should be," he said. "There are pieces of the technology that are mature and some are immature, so picking the right mix can be tough. Don't over sell the concept, but instead give customers a real solution that meets its business communication needs."

The challenge
GlobalConnect managing director, Pushkar Taneja, said the biggest challenge with IP telephony rollouts was the integration portion, which could be a headache. The system integrator has done a number of UC implementations, mainly for large enterprise with dispersed personnel across different offices or located on multiple floors. Smaller firms with a highly mobile workforce are also potential customers.

"The integration is the hard part because of the nature of the technology available, and the configuration parameters," he said. "Is the organisation working on different OS/and different versions of software? These are some things to consider."

Many companies say they want UC, but have no way of meeting the necessary requirements. "Partners need to do voice assessments and get a data infrastructure snapshot," Taneja said.

"Show a company how it can lower costs thanks to boosted productivity. Show how with presence users can find out who is available to talk, who is busy or in a meeting. Users can get the info without having to make the call to find out."

Express Data unified communications business development manager, Levi Sutherland, said it was important for resellers to pitch more than just the soft benefits of UC, such as productivity.

Instead, they needed to show customers how they saved some cold hard cash.