Can Your IT Department Handle the Switch to VoIP on Their Own? (Pt 2)

While the desire to physically own and control the technology utilized in your organization’s telephony system is understandable it isn’t particularly easy to dismantle. The fact of the matter is it’s better to focus your organization’s space, resources and attention on the work your employees perform and not on optimizing and maintaining the infrastructure that keeps the lights on and the phone lines open.

Selective Outsourcing?

Think about all the elements of your organization’s infrastructure, all those elements existing purely to facilitate the production of the products and services your organization runs, and ask yourself if you would really want to be personally responsible for all of them, or whether you’re comfortable having someone else, a specialist group, take care of the “care and feeding” of those systems. It won’t take more than a minute of internal inquiry to realize the more infrastructure operations you can outsource the better- and that includes the infrastructure of your organization’s telephony system.

Yet just because you can easily discount the necessity of physically hosting your organization’s VoIP gear that doesn’t mean you’ll be able to write off the human element quite so easily. That is to say, even though you won’t think twice about sending the physical equipment running your phone systems to a remote location, you’ll probably have a difficult time taking the responsibility of running those systems out of your IT department’s hands.

We admit- the human element of switching to any new technology can be tricky to handle, especially if it involves downsizing within your organization or otherwise making one or more members of your IT department redundant.

There are a couple of different ways to approach this dilemma.

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Can Your IT Department Handle the Switch to VoIP on Their Own? (Pt 1)

One of the benefits of switching to VoIP telephony solution is the organizational flexibility it provides you. Now, “organizational flexibility” can mean a lot of things, especially when it comes to current generation telephony technology. Organization flexibility can refer to the fact VoIP telephony provides you with a considerably easier time changing the size and scope of your organization, increasing its scalability dramatically compared with traditional telephony solutions. Yet it also hints at the fact that VoIP can help you restructure the way your organization works, including what staff you require and what systems can be handled by outside parties. Is your IT staff ready to finally switch to VoIP?

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Will there be 1 Billion Mobile VoIP Users by 2017?

A report released at the end of 2012 seemed to point towards a very promising future for mobile VoIP, which is, roughly speaking, nothing more than VoIP services run on smartphones and tablets through apps like the one offered by Skype or Google Voice. The report was released by Juniper Research and it projected the mobile VoIP world would chalk up 1 billion total subscribers by 2017. This is a bold projection, one that seems to indicate VoIP is the future of mobile telephony, but many experts read the report and asked a simple question- “How many of those users will actually generate revenue for mobile VoIP provider?”

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The Problem With the Lowest Possible Cost Mentality

business PBX Price is a factor in every single business decision you will every make, and that absolutely includes making the switch to IP telephony, upgrading your system, or otherwise spending money on your organization’s communications infrastructure. Now, we are not going to argue price should not be a factor. You have a budget for your unified communications solution and you probably can’t budge too hard on that budget, and that’s to say nothing of the fact the most expensive IP telephony solution probably isn’t going to be right for everyone. That being said, the least expensive IP telephony solution is unlikely to work for anyone.

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Is Hybrid PBX System a Good Solution?

Technological adoption doesn’t always progress quite as quickly as it should. Even when there’s a superior solution on the market it’s often up for grabs how long, exactly, it’ll take for users to transition from their old, increasingly inferior technology to more current, superior options. This is as true in the PBX market as it is in any other technology-focused market, and it occurs for pretty much the same reasons.

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Are Patent Wars Impacting the IP Telephony Market?

Apple and Samsung have been locked in legal battles for years, largely over patents related to smartphones. To perhaps oversimplify the matter Apple has been arguing that Samsung has wholesale ripped off the iPhone’s design from day one, and Samsung is countersuing on points of design minutiae that the Korean company argues Apple has stolen. While it seems obvious at first that Apple has the upper hand here, that just about every smartphone is guilty of ripping off the iPhone, when it comes down to it patent law is extremely granular and both sides have support and detraction from their legal claims.

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Will VoIP Taxes Become a Big Issue for IP Telephony?

Price is one of the biggest reasons why individuals and businesses may make the switch from traditional telephony services to IP telephony. Due to its increased scalability and efficiency, among other facts, it’s unlike IP telephony will ever cost as much as equivalent services from traditional telephony providers, yet the price of IP telephony may go up significantly in the future.

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IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 3)

Can you guarantee 100% uptime for my VoIP system?

Finding companies with the right breadth and depth of experience is an important step in making sure you end up hiring the right hosted PBX provider, and if you choose a company with an impressive and relevant pedigree you’re going to avoid most of the pitfalls the emerging IP telephony market is going to throw your way. But if you want to make sure you end up with a truly great hosted PBX provider then you’re going to need to dig a little deeper and start asking some questions, working out a total evaluation letting you know whether or not they’re the real deal.

How Much Access is Enough Access?

First, you want to make sure they offer the provider can offer you nationwide (and international) access. Even with great hosted PBX providers you might run into a case where they don’t offer coverage for some very remote areas, but overall you want to make sure your new provider is going to offer coverage for major metropolitan areas and anywhere you know your organization is going to need to have phone numbers in.

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IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 2)

At a very basic level the age of a hosted PBX provider gives you some sort of hint of their quality. Sure, there are some startups that come out of nowhere and truly revolutionize the field with some radical advance of telephony technology, but most of the months-old companies we’re going to see launch in the world of IP telephony aren’t in the market to innovate- they’re going to launch quick to cash in before quickly burning out, and that’s not the sort of provider you really need on your side keeping your phone lines open. VoIP experience comes with time of doing business and it certainly counts.

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IP Telephony Market Flooding and Cutting the Wheat from the Chafe (Pt 1)

We’ve said it before, but it needs to be emphasized- the hosted PBX provider you sign up with will determine how positively you view the technology and your switch to IP telephony. Being picky about who you choose to work with is increasingly important as the hosted PBX market grows. Not only will more organizations find themselves joining the IP telephony movement over the next couple of years, but we’re also going to see a whole lot of new hosted PBX providers jumping into the market in order to meet this demand and, unfortunately, to try and make some quick cash on what’s shaping up to be a truly hot commodity.

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