It is also broadband-over-powerline-compatible and can be unlocked from engin, users say.
Electrical and whitegoods retailer Appliance Spares Warehouse has 14 staff and two stores. Its phone bills on traditional voice technology were costing it as much as $1500 a month in some cases.
Adopting VoIP -- in its case by deploying an engin offering -- cut its monthly bill by an average of $300 or $400 a month. Some months it hovers around the $100 mark, according to managing director Philip Dunn.
Roy Wakim, an Asia-Pacific converged solutions director at communications vendor Avaya, says things are certainly going well.
A year or so ago, Avaya seemed a voice crying in the wilderness about IP advances like Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and the need for security. But SIP and security are now on almost everyone’s lips.
“Customers are looking at taking on technologies like SIP,” he says. “Most organisations now in Australia are taking IP telephony into their vision and deploying applications on top of it.”
Avaya is also opening up its platform to the development community -- a move the vendor expects will accelerate application opportunities. “We’ve got about 10 companies in Australia and a couple in New Zealand developing applications for Avaya,” Wakim says.
Customers have started seeking additional security features, based on open standards, in particular. Examples that have already been released include encryptions for sequences of numbers, such as credit card numbers or PINs, he says.
Service providers could also target SMBs with whom they have existing relationships or a history and think up ways to combine technology with carriage. System integrators will keep doing well in the mid-market or larger enterprise, especially adding applications on top, he says.
“And there’s also work with consumer products, like AOL or Yahoo, or Skype. I think the market is growing substantially and everyone has a place,” Wakim says.
My heart began a-thumpin’ and my mind began to fly
And I knew I wasn’t dealin’ with no ordinary guy
So while he was a-talking I was thinkin’ up my plan
Then my fingers did the walkin’ on the telephone man
– Meri Wilson, “Telephone Man”
Craig Neil, managing director at integrator NSC, says NSC has seen good growth, the bulk of which has been VoIP-related. Key to NSC success has been the development of a number of large, sound reference sites over a period of years.
NSC is doing about 95 percent IP to 5 percent TDM and a big driver of that is the ability to centralise and adapt communications flexibly across sites and applications. “Vendors have lifted their game as well. Our relationship with Avaya [for instance] is getting stronger and stronger,” Neil says.
Mick Regan, convergence director at Nortel, agrees, adding that many customers are now migrating to pure IP solutions. A year ago, most migrants bought the hybrid approach, he notes.
Further, ways to use VoIP with some very different devices -- such as RIM’s BlackBerry -- are appearing, Regan says.
But he warns that some statistics suggest the IP market has, if not quite stalled, started to slow. So extra effort from the channel is needed to kickstart further refreshes. “Customers are really looking for value,” Regan says. “What are the productivity gains and benefits?”
Gary Howes, channel manager at Genesys, says training the channel to educate users about potential benefits is proving critical. The contact centre specialist has set up Genesys University and Genesys Sales Academy to do just that, for both existing business partners and new resellers.
“No-one [in the channel] needs convincing now, but users do," Howes says. "But they all talk about IP as a serious option.”
Howes says return-on-investment, coupled with the right applications, are primary issues. Applications that smooth out telephony use peaks and troughs can do both, he points out.
“And there’s something new I have seen in Europe that will probably soon come here. Video-on-hold. Rather than having music while you’re on hold, you can have images and advertisements for your clients,” Howes says.
Charles Assaf, managing director at Nexon Asia-Pacific, reiterates that the move is not really about VoIP but IP telephony. Not voice so much as the diverse possibilities that going IP open up for users. “Unified communications, messaging, CRM and other systems. Just things that start to make networks a lot more efficient,” he says.
“Anything that lets them reduce the cost of the data network.”
Resellers with a strong data background may have the upper hand. IP telephony, after all, is closer to the data world than it is to voice. Many voice resellers, Assaf suggests, end up getting the expertise externally.
“Things like Quality of Service -- how would the [voice specialists] handle it?” Assaf says. “But the biggest challenge is security.”
Gwen John, managing director at value-added distributor Zircon, says the biggest challenge for data resellers is how to embrace VoIP or IP applications and deal with people who understand their issues from the data side. “A managed services distributor like Zircon, with its heritage in the data channel, can help them to overcome this and provide direction, training and support,” she says.
John believes big opportunities in VoIP exist for companies that offer pre-sales and implementation help in voice-and-data sales. If resellers do not feel they have the skills to deploy a particular offering but do have the relationship with the customer, partnership is the answer.
“There are also a couple of different opportunities open to them, which I’m currently trying to cement. They can install a new IP telephony system or they can choose a VoIP gateway solution to sit over their existing system,” John says. “There are options but they just need a distributor to help them through the entire process.”
Many more specialist companies like Zircon, therefore, are likely to appear in the near future, John says.
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