Vendors of network tools and telecoms are promoting voice over IP (VoIP) solutions for corporate networks, and analysts continue to predict a big market for this technology.
Analyst company IDC forecast that firms worldwide will spend over US$24bn on VoIP next year. However, many companies are still unsure about what VoIP can do and what benefits it can bring to their organisations. More importantly, there are still cost, quality and performance issues that have to be tackled before VoIP can become a mainstream technology.
VoIP can provide organisations with an alternative to analogue telephone connections. Instead of having to set up a dedicated circuit between parties, as happens with calls over the public telephone network or mobile networks, VoIP digitises conversations and transmits the data using standard TCP/IP networking packets.
This allows voice traffic to be carried over the same wires as Ethernet LAN and WAN data, or across wireless networks if required. With the right equipment, voice calls can be transmitted over the Internet, just like ordinary emails, Web pages and other Net-borne data.
Net savings
Because carrying voice and data on the same wire removes the need for separate networks, implementing VoIP can save companies money, although special digital exchanges and telephones are required. There may be little difference in terms of running costs when compared with a private branch exchange (PBX), but savings can be made on calls between offices.
The really big savings all come from international calls, as traffic can be sent via the Internet to call anywhere in the world. Fax costs can also be cut using VoIP.
One of the biggest advantages of VoIP is that it can support integrated voice and data applications Ã,Âit enables what used to be referred to as computer telephony integration. VoIP can make it a lot easier to build customer relationship management (CRM) applications, providing, for example, the ability to link Web and voice services. Video can also be added to the mix if required.
