Potential IP telephony problems

IP telephony equipment placed in an organisation’s data centre may already be protected by an online Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), be precision cooled, have physical security, and be monitored and managed by an internal IT staff that can provide immediate attention to it in the event of a problem.

However Peter Spiteri, senior marketing manager for Australia and New Zealand at Emerson Network Power Australia, believes with IP telephony going through the network, it’s important that organisations be aware of the possibilities of downtime and need to ensure this doesn’t happen.

“IP telephony differs from normal phone connections. For example the phone at home has a cable which goes through a system, ultimately powered by Telstra’s copper cables. IP telephony goes through a network and the Internet, so there is greater risk of businesses losing phone calls if their power goes out,” said Spiteri.

He said an IP telephony system must offer the same level of availability as traditional telephone systems. Downtime that may be tolerable within a traditional computer network is intolerable in an IP telephony system, because of the system’s convergence of critical applications for data, voice, and video.

Jeff Lumkin principal architect, consulting and design for Optus and an Emerson reseller has seen exactly the same problems as described by Spiteri.

“We believe it’s important to educate customers on power considerations when installing an IP telephony system,” he said. “Also with the commoditisation of the technology providing a UPS component can offer resellers a blend of margin. There can be a selling potential of 20 percent over a straight carriage sale,” said Lumkin.