Marketing the IP phone should be easy, right? It's novel and fulfills an extremely
compelling proposition: anytime,
anywhere portability of all your telephony applications across an open
standards network to users sitting in home offices. Simply plug the phone into any available RJ-45 Ethernet outlet
found on your xDSL or cable modem, and away you go. This idea is especially appealing to the telecom manager who is
being asked to facilitate a variety of home office user configurations, often
through off-premise extensions (OPX) or dedicated leased line technology. For this likely-to-be-harried manager, the
IP phone may seem like the way to keep the individual home office user
productive and content and save money for the business at the same time.
So why
hasn't this happened yet? Two primary
reasons: indecision regarding future
protocols and requirements for additional legacy PBX investment. The first issue delaying IP phone
implementation has to do with the continuing turf war over which protocol will
reign in the future. Several have been
mentioned as the likely winners in the game and include H.323 v2, SIP, and
MGCP. Pundits have claimed for many
years that SIP would solve all problems and evolve to dominate the market, but
that has yet to occur. As a result, many telecom managers are leery of
investing in SIP phones only to find MGCP leading the pack as the protocol du
jour at the next industry trade happening.
Suffice to say, the original open standards opportunities intended to
help drive the marketing of these phones seem dubious at this time.
The second
issue with IP phone proliferation is their reliance on the legacy PBX platform
to perform call setup, IP registrations, and bandwidth management. The non-traditional "green field"
customer who opts to undertake a forklift upgrade with a next-generation
solution is in the minority. Most
telecom managers are not so lucky and find themselves dealing with legacy PBXs
retrofitted to handle IP phones, leading to new problems and further investment
in the PBX. Many flagship PBXs, such as
Avaya's Definity™ ECS and Nortel's Meridian 1™, require upgrades to the latest
software release plus additional in-PBX proprietary digital cards that enable
them to work with IP phones. Even then,
it is usually only the OEM's phones that will work with the solution. This adds significantly greater cost to the
deployment and the risk of technological obsolescence should the manufacturer
change product direction.
IP phones
will eventually find their place in the enterprise, but the economic realities
of today's marketplace dictate a less risky course of action and staying with
more tried and true technologies.
Companies simply cannot afford to make poor decisions in that area. MCK
offers a viable, cost-effective and proactive way to reap the benefits of VoIP
and maintain the PBX investment. For
more information, call 888-454-7979.