VoIP: Taking the next step

The distributor is ramping up training and education in the UC space and plans to host a showcase in June/ July. "This year is all about educating the channel on the vision of UC and how to take it to market," Sutherland said.

He cited a Sage study of 200 SMBs which suggested each employee had about six physical devices (whether it be mobile phone, smartphone or Blackberry) and more than four different software apps (email, IM, softphone).

"People are spending more time managing different forms of communication," he said. "They are becoming more mobile and it's very difficult to reach people. It's all about message tag and helping reduce it." Partners need to understand the business and its processes to get a snapshot. "Know what questions to ask. Does it have UC maturity? For example, is the company using instant messenger in a basic state and using public IMs like Yahoo or MSN, or is it using enterprise-grade IM tools?" Sutherland said.

"Take into account compliance issues, archive, back up and storage. If the business is growing, and IM is a part of the communication plan, migrate them to enterprise IM solutions.

"People see UC as utopia [it makes everyone mobile and accessible], but taking a company from a basic to an advanced stage can be difficult. It's a change in communication management and way of thinking." Partners can offer companies a phased-in approach. "Identify maturity level, from public to robust IM, upgrade the voice network, and the collaboration. It is complex and involves a few levels of service," Sutherland said.

The first step
Nortel Microsoft Business Manager, Kirsten Gilbertson, agreed there were a lot of consulting and services jobs involved in the UC project.

"The first step is to unify the silos of communications," she said.

Partners can then help a company move beyond the building block phase, which is where the industry is at today, and link the infrastructure to line of business applications and processes.

The convergence of voice, video and data over IP is providing new ways for companies to connect, communicate and collaborate, while giving service providers something new to talk about, Dimension Data enterprise architect, Jon Farrell, said.

"Locally, we're seeing the VoIP story become popular with companies doing building refreshes and in greenfields - VoIP is a given there," he said. "But with larger enterprise, we have to work a bit harder in demonstrating additional value. That's where unified communications comes in."

Farrell said it had already deployed more than 500,000 IP handsets and 2000 IP networks worldwide. "Discuss a broader UC strategy in enterprise. Look to the broader vision of where they want to be. Look at the role VoIP will play in converged environments," he said.

There are synergies between traditional VoIP products like Cisco Call Manager and unified communication gear like Microsoft's Live Communication Server. "There are key capabilities of the two products, like presence and click-to-call, which is providing robust solutions across the enterprise," Farrell said. Indeed, there are top things to consider when traveling down the convergence path. But before making the move to convergence and IP telephony, companies need to understand the ultimate benefits, investment requirements and the route that makes most sense for their state of maturity, Farrell said.

Getting ready
Doing a convergence readiness assessment was the first step, and often the hardest part, he said. Resellers can help a customer think about investment against cost reduction; introduce scalability and flexibility without impacting service availability; simplify the management of operational infrastructure without compromising quality; and introduce flexible working routines whilst promoting best practice.

While security was still a big concern with customers, it wasn't always the top priority, Farrell said. "As a best practice, run separate VLANs for voice traffic, ensuring a separation between the voice and data network. This will improve the quality of the call."

Integ Group director of marketing, Kerry Scotland, said security was important, but not always the main topic of conversation these days.

"It's important to cover all the ends points in IP telephony, which can be insecure more so than the traditional phone system," she said. There have been lots of developments on the encryption front, which eases concerns.

The lion share of Integ's IP telephony business comes from medium to large enterprise, but the company is set to go after the SMB arena by launching a delivery services model for smaller companies. Scotland said the majority of customers were starting to prepare for a UC rollout, and getting more and more comfortable with VoIP.

For Integ, the most successful IP implementations are the ones that involve both its staff and the customers' own IT manager or CIO.

"IP telephony rollouts work well when there's a blended team, bringing together the customers and project manager," Scotland said. "The roles and responsibilities and ownership comes out with that and there's some good collective success."