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Is your business ready for VoIP?

Posted on 9 Jul 2010 at 16:05

Four steps to switching to VoIP

We’ve discussed what makes a VoIP system, and explained why you might not find it all together inside your existing setup. So what’s the roadmap to get from here to a successful, reliable VoIP service inside your network?

1 - Prototyping

You need to bring together several different strands to make a working VoIP LAN. There are the external relationships, the border kit, and the internal software and hardware. Dipping a toe in the water with VoIP seems challenging because all these parts have to work, but lots of phone system software houses (such as 3CX) give away a limited-user version of their code for just this purpose.

At the very lowest level, there are lots of devices that want to hide the VoIP layer away from the user, such as the AVM Fritz!Box (www.avm.de/eu). These overlap between home and business users – most commonly, a wireless router with phone ports on the back. If you’re trying to put together your prototype setup then it may seem expensive to fork out £150 for one of these devices, but older routers will most likely interfere with VoIP traffic and destroy your chances of testing other parts of the system.

2 - Parallel networks

It may not seem as though parallel networking naturally follows from discussing prototypes, but it’s a vital issue. Assuming you have a good external VoIP pipeline and a server dedicated to operate as a PBX ready to roll. How are you going to provision the phones? Bigger companies tend to have enough spare CAT-5e to desktops to run the phones on separate LANs, with voice switches in racks beside the older data ones (VoIP phones are powered down the Ethernet line, from Power over Ethernet switches).

Smaller VoIP roll-outs can take advantage of the provision of a passthrough port on the underside of the phones; the phone is smart enough to pass DHCP through to the PC plugged into the secondary port. Beware, however, those phones that deliver only 10Mbits/sec links on their passthrough ports; both snom (www.snom.com) and Grandstream (www.grandstream.com) are good options if you need new phones.

If you can persuade your personnel to live without traditional telephones altogether and just run soft telephony applications on their PCs, then parallel networks cease to be a concern: instead, you’ll be dealing with the long-term stability of all your PCs. Where it becomes difficult is when you have to support software phones on a mish-mash of operating systems, network cards, drivers and workloads.

3 - Admit the market is imperfect

Telephony has just as many crony relationships and “not really” standards as the computing world. Don’t think you can make a stable VoIP setup by plugging together services, systems and structures that have the same standards boxes ticked, because the products aren’t going to play ball. Where you see a supplier making an offer and hinting that you might like to buy a bit of kit – a DSL router with added VoIP say, or a specific brand of VoIP PBX kit – then don’t buck the trend.

4 - Ditch your old system – slowly

Living without a traditional company phone system seems a massive leap. Where a network will commonly have a bit of a blip once every nine months or so, phone systems can run for years, if not decades, without interference.

To persuade your company that the considerable savings available from using VoIP and SIP are worth the risk of the occasional Monday morning when the company has to operate on the fax line and mobiles is a major stumbling block, and this can be a big part of the project. But money is a powerful talker, and renewing a phone system contract can involve five- and six-figure sums.

Don’t let this persuade you to dump that system. Instead, as soon as the old phone system has had its contract renewed, give yourself a year to trial your VoIP system properly. That should allow at least a six-month parallel run, which is long enough to have dry runs over losing VoIP service, get a few (much reduced) bills in, and allow your employees’ sense of unease to dissipate a bit.

There will be some rough passages along the way, but in the long run the cost savings you’ll achieve are almost certainly worth it.

Author: Steve Cassidy