Telephony Winds Shift Toward IP

User acceptance of IP telephony is on the upswing. While it will be many

years before all voice traffic on the century-old public switched telephone

network (PSTN) travels over newer packet-based networks, that migration is

officially under way both in enterprise and service provider networks.

Why now, after years of discussion about the benefits of using IP to

integrate data and voice, is IP telephony catching on? First, investments in

legacy technologies have begun to depreciate, making room for new network

equipment in some enterprise and service provider networks. Second,

voice-over-IP (VoIP) signaling and quality-of-service (QoS) technologies have

matured. Third, the continued deregulation of the world’s telephony markets is

opening up the potential for VoIP in new regions.

The trend is to combine all forms of network traffic onto a single, flexible

packet infrastructure is decisive - because data traffic volumes will soon

surpass voice traffic volumes. Packet telephony solutions move voice and fax

calls from proprietary circuit-switched networks onto standards-based IP, Frame

Relay, or ATM networks. Because the telephone is such an important business

tool, a transition must not disrupt service. Connections must remain as

dependable as those delivered by the familiar proprietary private branch

exchange (PBX) and the public switched telephone network (PSTN).

Together, these developments are unshackling enterprises and service

providers from the limitations of proprietary telephony switching equipment,

freeing them to deploy compelling VoIP applications and services that save

money, improve user productivity, and enrich customer relationships.

On the enterprise side, companies are taking a migratory approach to IP

telephony deployment. For example, a common strategy is to roll out IP telephony

in new network sites rather than continuing to invest in proprietary legacy

private branch exchange (PBX) equipment.

The question that will come to the mind of every Indian business would be–"If

the PBX works well, why do I need a packet telephony infrastructure?" My

answer to them is–This is not about fixing what isn’t broken. It is about

preparing your network to be a strategic asset for the future.

Enabling new applications



Many people tout the potential cost savings of consolidation, but the true

value of integrated networking goes beyond the telecom budget. Integrating data

and voice onto one packet infrastructure enables new capabilities that are not

possible with separate networks.

One important application area is customer care. Your voice network should be

integrated with Web operations to improve your communication with customers.

Doing a better job of looking after customers than your competitor’s means

that more people will do more business with you. To ensure that quality and

reliability do not change, enterprises require a carefully planned, multistep

migration. Enterprise managers don’t wake up one morning and say, ‘I’m

consolidating my networks. You can do it in steps that make sense to you.

IP telephony has matured significantly in the last two years. The last two

years have seen the technology evolve into a robust and stable platform to

deliver voice over IP. The technology and its applications have grown as a

direct result of a latent market demand perceived for open standards and

value-added services — while also delivering cost advantages.

Traditional PBXs–which form the common intra-office communication network

today–promise to deliver an array of value-added services, which PBXs claim to

support–such as voice features. However, because these systems tend to

leverage proprietary technology, unless an enterprise installs all its PBXs from

the same supplier, the features of the various PBXs will not interoperate.

In addition, the features of traditional PBXs are difficult to program.

Because of this challenge, many companies outsource some or all of the

programming of their PBXs to third parties at a high cost. Finally, the

price/performance of conventional PBXs has been stagnant for years, thereby

making PBX systems unaffordable to the extent that these devices are seldom

deployed in small or even midsize offices.

Given the nature of IP-PBX’s, they are based on open standards. Moreover,

the technology has now scaled to the ability to deliver voice functionality that

has been promised (to small and midsize businesses) by conventional PBXs but

seldom delivered. Successfully delivering QoS, a comprehensive

data-cum-telephony solution is in use at large sites, worldwide.

Further, IP-PBX’s enable some of the most customer friendly services right

at the customer desktop. IP-based PBXs, today, provide a standard browser based

screens with radio buttons, drop down menus and simple graphical user interface.

This feature eliminates the need to outsource the task of programming call

features, in addition to providing a worldwide web browsing facility off the

phone.

IP-based PBXs also provide considerable functionality, including the

following:

n They can be

remotely managed by virtue of the web interface;



n They can process
routine tasks, such as forwarding calls and self-maintained personal telephone

directories, in a simple manner that uninitiated users can understand and use,

by virtue of the user-friendly phone menus;



n They provide
unified in-boxes for faxes, files, and voice mail, by virtue of the Unified

Communications software integration with the PBX software;



n They support
auto-attendants, by virtue of the IVR-based integrated voice and date SW

controller;



n They offer
automatic call distribution (ACD);



n Self configurable
ring types by virtue of the features of IP phones;



n Use IP-based
switches with Ethernet in-line power for phone management, thus eliminating the

need for a separate power connection to the IP phone; and



n Limit cabling to
converged single cable for voice, video and data communications.

Because of these features, small and midsize offices can now gain

capabilities that were previously either impossible or economically

unjustifiable.

An example of another benefit of IP telephony is the ability to browse Web

pages from a phone. Underlying this capability is a technology called Voice

eXtensible Markup Language (VXML). VXML is similar to HTML. When a user calls a

special phone number, the call is routed to a device called a voice response

unit (VRU). The VRU launches a Web browser, which finds and interprets a

document written in VXML and then responds to the caller. Users can interact

with the Web either by voice or touch-tones. All this can be achieved with

compliance to the telecom regulatory norms in India.

Impact on IT budgets



One question that lingers in the minds of many is whether, and how, IP

telephony will save money. Every consultant knows the answer to that question:

it depends. Realizing savings benefits by deploying IP telephony depends on the

information technology (IT) organization’s ability to reduce the costs

associated with the following:

n IT personnel;



n Network equipment;
and



n Transmission
services.

To reduce personnel costs, the IT organization must reinvent itself in a way

so that the majority of its members are competent in both voice and data

technologies. While the reengineering of skills is certainly possible, as a

general rule, networking technology evolves notably faster than do networking

organizations and associated skillsets. So the most likely scenario is that only

a small number of agile companies will quickly see any significant personnel

savings because of the deployment of IP telephony.

It is more likely that an organization in the field of information technology

will reduce the cost of its networking equipment somewhat due to the deployment

of IP telephony. In particular, over time, packet switching is becoming notably

more cost-effective than circuit switching. Packet switching will soon be 20 to

50 times more cost-effective, at the very least, than circuit switching–partly

because of its "connectionless" nature, which makes it simpler, and

also because of its adherence to open development standards rather than

proprietary architecture.

The author is president (India & SAARC) at Cisco Systems.



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