Cisco exec talks up IP telephony ROI

Don Proctor, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Voice Technology Group, is responsible for the direction of the company's convergence products and strategy. Last month at the VoiceCon show in Washington, D.C., Proctor spoke with Network World Senior Writer Phil Hochmuth about why businesses should invest in IP telephony and about Cisco's voice road map.

What is the return-on-investment case for IP telephony?

ROI is the thing that matters most right now. . . . While the ROI that can result in a 10% decrease in IT staff costs [as a result of simplified adds, moves and changes with IP telephony] can be a good business decision, it's also very interesting to look at the ROI that could be achieved by just a 2% increase in the productivity of end users. The notion here is that total-cost-of-ownership [TCO] savings has become table stakes.

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Don Proctor, vice president and general manager of Cisco's Voice Technology Group, is responsible for the direction of the company's convergence products and strategy. Last month at the VoiceCon show in Washington, D.C., Proctor spoke with Network World Senior Writer Phil Hochmuth about why businesses should invest in IP telephony and about Cisco's voice road map.

What is the return-on-investment case for IP telephony?

ROI is the thing that matters most right now. . . . While the ROI that can result in a 10% decrease in IT staff costs [as a result of simplified adds, moves and changes with IP telephony] can be a good business decision, it's also very interesting to look at the ROI that could be achieved by just a 2% increase in the productivity of end users. The notion here is that total-cost-of-ownership [TCO] savings has become table stakes.

This boils down to measuring infrastructure investment. This includes TCO, of course, but it also [includes] looking at things like . . . How can you get better asset efficiency on what you already have in place today? What's the value in your company of preserving multiple options in the future? Should your business be in some state of transition?

While small and midsize firms are using IP telephony more, what are the barriers for widespread rollout in larger companies?

People are still getting comfortable with the technology. One of the biggest barriers to deployment today comes down to a skills issues in many cases. [Customers] are still building the experience level and skill level to be comfortable with [IP telephony]. People who come from a traditional voice background may feel they are facing a number of unknowns. In most cases, [traditional voice] professionals don't realize how much of their voice experience can be leveraged in this new world of converged networks.

For our part, Cisco will be introducing a new professional certification program focused specially on IP telephony. When I talk to customers about the divide between traditional voice background and the IP telephony background, many don't realize that [approximately] 54% of the engineers who build voice products at Cisco come from a traditional voice world.

Many competitors are migrating from Windows-based servers toward Linux and real-time operating systems for their IP BX products. Are any changes on the horizon for the Cisco CallManager IP PBX software, which is Windows-based?