Managed VoIP services to star at VoiceCon

Sprint and NEC create packages to outsource corporate VoIP.

Hardware vendors will team with carriers at the VoiceCon conference this week in San Francisco to offer managed and hosted VoIP services that lighten management and capital costs as businesses transition from traditional PBXs to IP phones.

The show, now in its 16th year, focuses on the corporate use of VoIP technology; it's expected to draw 74 exhibitors and 3,500 attendees, and features a keynote address by Anoop Gupta, Microsoft's vice president of unified communications, as well as presentations from large corporations that have deployed VoIP including Coca-Cola, Barclays Global Investors and NASA.

For companies looking to run VoIP-based call centers, Sprint plans to announce it will package its 800-number service with its MPLS network services and Avaya call center gear to offer Sprint Hosted Contact Center (see graphic). The service takes start-up costs out of VoIP call centers and gives customers a flat monthly fee based on the number of agents the service supports. Pricing starts at $100 per month for a minimum of 30 seats and a five-year agreement. The per-seat costs drop as the number of seats increases.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

Hardware vendors will team with carriers at the VoiceCon conference this week in San Francisco to offer managed and hosted VoIP services that lighten management and capital costs as businesses transition from traditional PBXs to IP phones.

The show, now in its 16th year, focuses on the corporate use of VoIP technology; it's expected to draw 74 exhibitors and 3,500 attendees, and features a keynote address by Anoop Gupta, Microsoft's vice president of unified communications, as well as presentations from large corporations that have deployed VoIP including Coca-Cola, Barclays Global Investors and NASA.

For companies looking to run VoIP-based call centers, Sprint plans to announce it will package its 800-number service with its MPLS network services and Avaya call center gear to offer Sprint Hosted Contact Center (see graphic). The service takes start-up costs out of VoIP call centers and gives customers a flat monthly fee based on the number of agents the service supports. Pricing starts at $100 per month for a minimum of 30 seats and a five-year agreement. The per-seat costs drop as the number of seats increases.

Click to see: Sprint's VoIP services

The service also integrates e-mail, instant messaging and fax into an agent's mix of communications modes. Other options include outbound dialers that make contacting potential customers more efficient, and call recording and monitoring to keep track of how well agents perform.

NEC plans to announce a managed IP telephony service comprising NEC gear at customer sites and carrier services for phone calls over the WAN. A deluxe option manages the LAN as long as it is composed of Cisco and NEC gear. "NEC has an established following on the [TDM] telephony side and on the Cisco side, too," says Jay Lassman, a research director at Gartner. NEC has been a Cisco value-added reseller for years, so it has expertise in selling, setting up and running Cisco networks, he says.

"This service is going to be for a small or midsize business that is looking for conservation of capital and low risk and still wants to move to IP," Lassman says. Larger companies with hard-to-manage phone networks that are "looking for the easy way out" would be more likely to go to Avaya Managed Services, he adds.

Even so, Lassman says the NEC service will compete against the Avaya service, as well as managed VoIP services from Inter-Tel.

In other news expected at the show, Avaya is upgrading its VoIP handsets to support VPN connections between its IP phones and VPN gateways that are made by Avaya, Cisco or Juniper. The phones previously supported only Avaya VPN gateways.

Customers can deploy any Avaya VoIP phone remotely and connect securely via an IPSec VPN link to an Avaya IP PBX, giving the phone the same functionality as if it were wired to the LAN.

The VPN client in the phone is compatible with Cisco PIX and VPN 3000 concentrators, as well as Juniper's ISG, SSG and NetScreen gateways. The software is embedded in the phone and connects only to the PBX.

"You can't get at it, you can't plug anything else into it. It's locked up and secure," says Lawrence Byrd, Avaya's director of IP telephony and mobility.