Voice over IP A Discussion of Business and IT Challenges

The Implementation Challenge

Having good technical skills and a robust scalable network is not enough to successfully implement IP telephony in an organization. Most large organizations’ biggest challenge will be to design and execute a migration strategy to the new IP telephony system without disrupting normal business operations. The migration strategy should include infrastructure upgrades, system preparation and testing, voice-circuit provisioning or migration for new system, and deployment scheduling. The infrastructure upgrades not only consists of making sure that proper hardware, software, and bandwidth exist, but also includes implementation of a Quality of Service (QoS). QoS is a scheme to provide priority, dedicated bandwidth, and control jitter and latency for voice and data traffic throughout the enterprise network. System preparation requires proper configuration and testing of the IP telephony system. Typically, this is least of the problems as experienced consultants can be hired to insure proper configuration and testing. Voice circuit provisioning or migration is a very critical and high-risk task. Proper voice-circuit delivery and installation is usually beyond a company’s control. During this process, a company is totally dependant on the telephone company. Since these companies have a monopoly in their business, they are not always responsive to problems that may arise. Additionally, these companies are well known for going on strikes which can be devastating for an enterprise that is undergoing a telephone system migration. A very careful and coordinated effort from the equipment manufacture, VoIP vendor, and the telephone service provider is required. Last but not least, careful scheduling and planning is required to deploy IP telephones to replace the existing phones. When deploying new IP telephones, it is typically recommended to remove the users old phone and replace it with the new IP phone. This places the user in a total immersion situation. This forces them to learn the new operational features of the IP Phone on a much quicker learning curve. It also prevents end-users’ aversion to change as the change is already made for them.