Voip has changed the way business operate.  Business are consolidating.  Business cummunication are leaning toward centralize communication management because of the so call technlogy we call Voip.  In an effort to educate business more about voip, I'm wring this article on the PROS and CONS.  Voip definitely has PROS.  It allow business to be more flexible.  It allow business to be more streamline.  Let's say for example, we just implemented Voip for a Health Care Firm.  They have more than a dozen business in Austin.  They have a centralize call center that answer the phone calls for all locations.  Wow, it's must easier to manage 1 call center then to manage a dozen people in a dozen locations.  This Firm now can also have employee working from home.  Having the ability to offer employees more options is another plus.  It's tough to find the right talent, don't we as employer want to keep them once we find them?  The key is to offer more options.  Voip does just that!

CONS!  Let's talk about CONS!  There have been numerous talk about how VOIP lines can save you money.  This is really true most of the time when Bandwidth is already provided.  When you calcuate the cost of Bandwidth and Voip lines together, sometimes traditional phone lines may be cheaper.  When I say traditional, I meant analog, T1, PRI, ISDN, etc.  To me, a business looking to cut cost, should lean toward more the cost saving of labor instead of the direct cost of phones and internet services.  Voip can do that.  For example, multiple offices now can have 1 person answering the phones instead of the traditional 1 receptionist per office.  This is true savings.  No matter how you calculate the cost of Technology, Technology is always cheaper than man hours!

CONS!  Are there more?  Of course!  Voip will probably never be as sturdy or stable as Digital Phone System.  I remember Digital phone system going for years without a single reboot.  I've seen Voip goes for a year or two without a reboot, but not too often.  If your VOIP phones network is sharing the same network with your data network, and your data network goes down, most likely your phone system will go down.  Of course, there are ways around this, but it normally cost a more.

CONS!  QOS!  We must think about QOS!  With digitial phone system, we almost never have to worry about how stable the network is.  Do you have enough bandwidth?  With Voip, we have to take this in consideration.  Especially when we do not want to cough the extra bucks to pay for Guarantee Qos or Cos.  VOIP does not consume alot of bandwidth per calls, but it does adds up.  VOIP problems most of the time are not related to bandwidth.  It's more related to  LATENCY!  LATENCY, which is the delay from point a to point b.  A good way to look at this is MOTORCYLE and 18 wheelers.  18 wheelers can haul much more equipment and packages from one place to another, however it takes 18 wheelers longer to get there.  VOIP needs motorcycle and not 18 wheelers.  It just needs to gets smaller packets to get there faster, instead of larget pakets to destination at the same time.  That's why MPLS, POINT-to-POINT T1, Fiber, and Ethernet hand off have been getting more and more attentions. 

Unified Communications integrate the following features:  Telephony, conferencing, messaging, instant messaging, clients, and business enabled business process (database).  Unified communications help cut cost and or help business process be more effiicient. 

Just got out of a clas for Adtran Netvanta Unfied Communication Server Solutions.  Wow!  Technologies have improved and advanced so much.  With UC, you can integrate phone system, voicemail, email, faxes, OBDC (Open Database Connectivity) or CEBP (Customer Enhance Busienss Process) which means in a nutshell, integrating phone system, voicemail system, automated attendant with customer existing database.  This can improve busienss process which in turns increase profit and or ROI.  This system can support 2000 users.

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Very inexpensive and reliable.

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I just had another ahhah moments.  After being in the Telecom Industry for over a decades.  It seems like we never stop learning, especially in Telecom.  I met with a potential customer and got a chance to understand more about their business.  I finally understand what it means to have Unfied Communications.  Unified Communications is a products that integrate with your phone system and network that can help certain customers improve productivity through automation and and collaboration.  Did we win the deal?  No, but forturnately for me, I've gain valuable knowledge that I can carry on with me to help provide a better solutions for the next potential customer that fit this category. 

I just got back from Xorcom School two weeks ago.  It was very intense training, headache, yet well worth the investment in time and money.  Xorcom, an asterisk based pbx solutions which is the most rapidly growing telephony platform in the world.  Xorcom offers flexible cost effective range of solutions and hardware plaforms in the Asterisk market.  Solutions include, but not limited to Complete Concierge - Integrated PBX and PMS system whcih was engieer and design for the Hospitality market such as hotels, motels, nursing homes, etc. This packages allow us to integrate the phone system to the their existing hospitality system such as Micros Opera, Protel PMS, Armadeus Hospitality, Optima PMS, Brilliant, Newhotel, etc.  Xorcom solutions also offer call accounting package.  System can grow to 1000 analog ports.  Features includes message waiting indicator, wake up call, support for sip phones, all asterisk features, paging system, input and output for features such as door phone, door entry lock, etc.   If you were to tell me a few years ago, you are purchasing an open source phone system, I will probably respond good luck to you.  Open source has been a great idea.  However, there are no true responsiblity.  Support was open.  Xorcom has fix this issue.  Updates are being control.  New development goes through extensive testing.  We are please to be able add to our solutions portfolio.

http://www.bcs-ip.com/xorcom.htm

Everyone business, whether small, medium, or enterprises at one time have to deal with the decision making process of adapting the next new technology.  It can be as simple as, should we go with dsl, t1, or cable internet, or as complex as, what should our next phone system platform be, digital, analog or VOIP Phone System.  Regardless of what the decsion is, there is always this one thing about technology!  There is always a Trade Off! 

You want an cheaper phone system - The chances are, you will loose features and benefits of a higher end system.

You want to get the system install fast and not waste too much of existing employees times - This will be great for short term as far as productivity is concern.  When I say short, I'm talking hours or days.  The reality of this is that, it is not recommended.  You will have far too many communication problems.  Employee will not know how to check voicemail and you will loose business.  Employee will not record their names or greeting in the voicemail boxes, which will cause some potential clients not to leave voice messages, and possible loose messages.  Adapting technology such as phone system, voicemail, auto attendant does indeed help with productivity, however, it still does require human intervention.  The more you are willing to learn about the system, the more you will get out of it.  The more you can help streamline your business process.

You want to go VOIP - VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is now the BUZZ in Telecom Industry.  Is there a benefit to a pure VOIP Phone System?  Yes there is!  There are also trade off!  VOIP can have many benefits.  Digital phone system also has it's benefits.
Here are a few benefits of VOIP - It's much easier to intergrate your phone system with your computer system via Tapi (Telephony Application Programming Interface) vs. Digital Phone System.  You ask, what is Tapi?  Tapi is a Microsoft Windows API, which provides helps intergrate computer application software to your phone system.  A good example would be Allworx Call Assistance Software.  With this software, you can now record a conversation to your PC in a .wav format simliar to music or audio files.  You then, can burn it to a cd or dvd or even email out the conversations.  Is there a trade off to VOIP?  Of course there is!  Here's one that we have found our through many installs.  VOIP cannot possibly be as stable as one any analog phone line or the old traditional Digital Phone System.  That's just something we learn from our experience.  Do we still use VOIP?  Sure, we do.  Because of the flexibility, VOIP is still worth the hassle of going through the new learning curve.  Image if we never accepted cell phone back in the days because the quality is not as great as a land line phone.  Where would we be today?  We have accepted cell phone, the goods and the bad:  Drop calls, poor quality at certain locations, etc.  Is there any reasons why VOIP cannot be accepted by all business?

To keep this short, I will just make a list of pros and cons of digital vs voip phone system:

VOIP Pros:  Lots of features, very flexible (you can work from anywhere), very easy to intergrate with computer system or software (outlook, call assistance, iphone, etc), Voip phone can help you save on cable cost 1 data cable vs 1 voice and 1 data cable per stations.
VOIP Cons:  Not as solid as digital phone system or 1 analog phone, however it is still pretty reliable.
Digital Phone System Pros:  In most case, much more sturdy and stable then VOIP Phones. 
Digital Cons:  Total cost of ownership is typically higher,  not as flexible.

If you are a client or customer that have use our products and services and or happy, please leave us a testimonial.  If you are a client or customer that have use our products and services, and or unhappy, we also woule like to know about it so that we can resolve any issues that we can.  If we don't know about it, we cannot help. 

Pure SIP Phone System vs Hosted Phone System

If you are looking into getting a hosted phone system from a provider the most important thing, is that you may want to ask the provider whether or not the phone number they give you can be ported.  Ask yourself, is your business phone number important?  Be careful, as with hosted phone system, your phone numbers aren't really yours.  You are only renting them from your provider.  If you choose to switch provider, it can be a problem.  Look at it like this, would you sign a contract with any service provider for the rest of your life? 

Hosted phone system can be cost effective in the short term, but it may not be in the long term.  Let's say for example, you are a small business with 4 employees that needed 4 phones.  Let's say you are paying $50.00 per seats.  This may be be not much now, but let's say business started booming and you grow to 50 employees.  Now, you will be paying $2500 a month for just the phones.  You will most likely need to increase your bandwidth accordingly for the amount of phones and data traffic that your business require.  Remember, the phone system is hosted elsewhere, so it will utilize more bandwidth than a phone system on site, such as our Allworx VOIP Phone System.

Another thing, with hosted solutions, you are stuck with one carrier.  With Pure Phone System solutions, you can have 2 different carrier, which can be much more flexible when it comes to disaster recovery and or redundant.  You are probably saying, you do not need that much more features now, you may want to think again.  20 years ago, we never thought we would ever needed more storange than a floppy hard drive.  We always wonder why would someone pay for a dsl connection.  We never thought we needed our own personal computers.  Time change, technology change, business will always change.  Are you flexible enough so that you can adapt to the changing enviroment?