Today, we’d like to direct our readers to two great (and free) resources made available by Avaya about how to approach VoIP deployments. The first report titled “The True Cost of Voice over IP” was written by Robin Gareiss, executive vice president and senior founding partner at Nemertes Research; the paper reviews the latest deployment trends and costs associated with VoIP for midsize and large rollouts. The second piece is called “Assessing the Opportunity for Communication-Enabled Business Solutions: Five Key Considerations.”
In the first report, Gareiss notes that most companies are moving forward with VoIP — whether it is a pilot or a full-scale deployment. According to the research, nearly 80% of IT professionals say it’s vital to build a business case for any technology deployment yet it is often difficult to do so, since it’s hard to judge how much implementation and ongoing operations will cost prior to actually deploying the technology. VoIP complicates matters because it represents a new paradigm for real-time communications compared to simply it’s different from expanding TDM by adding a new PBX.
To get at the data, Nemertes found out how much companies actually spent on their deployments via conducted one-on-one interviews with 200 IT practitioners and using electronic survey data from another 1,393 respondents. The data examines everything from vendor-specific equipment and training costs, providing corresponding cost -benefit case studies and analysis. A full copy of the report is available from Webtorials here.
The second analytical report, provided by Avaya, starts with the premise that real-time communication within the enterprise is now multi-modal. Users not only have access to voice but also mobile text messaging, instant messaging, presence, video, document and application sharing across many types of mobile and desktop computing devices. As a result, companies must look at their communications systems in an entirely new way — a unified whole rather than a set of separate devices, components and applications. A parallel principle notes that communications is no longer just a necessary expenditure to support day-to-day business activities; rather, it has become an integral part of an enterprise’s overall strategy to drive improved productivity and competitiveness.
Looking beyond unified communications, Avaya suggests that communications-enabled business processes (CEBP) that involve the direct integration of communication systems with business applications or processes create new value across the enterprise — improving personal productivity by removing the human latency from business processes. Avaya contends that CEBP is a game changer because it “creates a competitive edge by structuring communications around the business process, rather than communications functions remaining isolated and purely user-driven.”
More on Avaya’s insights about CEBP and the full paper can be found here.
Our thanks to Avaya and Webtorials for making these reader resources available.
