* Final in the series of how organizations extend VoIP to the branch
This weeks’ column concludes our three-week analysis of how organizations extend VoIP to their branch offices.
Most commonly, they install IP PBXs at every location; 40% have adopted a distributed architecture. Another 35% deploy their PBXs regionally, and link each branch to an number of regions (also known as a clustered approach).
But 17% of the participants in Nemertes’ Convergence & Next-Generation WAN Technologies benchmark implement one IP PBX in a central location. At each remote site, they deploy handsets and a router/switch, and all voice calls are routed to the central IP PBX, which completes the call. This approach is most common among small and midsize businesses.
On the positive side, a centralized architecture minimizes the number of IP PBXs an organization must buy and manage. On the negative side, redundancy and performance could suffer. In Nemertes’ benchmark, 62% of the participants who fall into this category use Cisco IP PBXs; 38% use Nortel.
“Every conversation is IP trunked back to main campus, and switching takes place at the headquarters,” says the IT director of a 28-site healthcare company. “If a T-1 goes down, we can register phones and dial out with a minimum of two backup POTS lines and up to six POTS lines.”
A small percentage of benchmark participants – 6% – rely on service providers to extend VoIP to their branch offices. In the future, though, IT executives say they expect carriers to fill that role even more. They don’t have the internal resources, particularly large organizations with hundreds and thousands of remote sites, to implement, maintain and manage equipment at branch offices. However, they see the carriers as well-poised to take over that function.
The most typical scenario for branch offices would be the following: The organization deploys and manages an IP PBX at the headquarters building or campus, and potentially a few other large locations. For the remainder of location, they prefer to have the carriers provide a hosted service, in which they host and manage the IP PBX and other applications (like unified communications and audio conferencing).
Most IT executives say they’re still waiting for carriers to provide such offerings, with some compelling and successful references. “We are looking at both options – carrier and in-house – with Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, and AT&T. The IPCentrex solution set is interesting in some locations, but we haven’t seen it priced or productized the way we want it yet,” says the IT director of a financial-services firm. “The carriers have to be cost-competitive (carriers). Between 18-36 months down the road, it will shift from cost per minute to a different equation. We need to move out of the cost-per minute environment and more to an apples-to-apples comparison.”
Several other IT executives said the carriers should price branch-office solutions on a per-user basis, making it much easier to do apples-to-apples comparisons. Some of the managed service providers do this – passing along the actual circuit charges with a $12- to $18-per-user premium for managing the circuit infrastructure (and more for the desktop).
Our advice to the carriers: Handle the local access (DSL/cable modem) ordering and installation. Provide hosted VoIP services and applications (unified messaging, audio conferencing) that may or may not tie back into premise-based IP PBXs or servers at headquarters. Monitor and manage the equipment and any problems at the branch offices. Add some mobility integration, so that mobile branch-office workers can extend their desktop IP phone numbers, features, and interfaces to their wireless phones. And offer compelling service-level agreements.
Benchmark participants identified branch-office services as the fourth-most-important offerings upon which carriers need to focus.
Already, 82% of organizations are using broadband access. They often buy business-grade service, so network access constraints generally aren’t an issue for branch-office VoIP. (About 15% of locations in organizations with hundreds of branch offices do have some performance issues.)
This is where second-tier carriers, such as Megapth/Netifice, Masergy, Savvis, and XO can really cash in on a big demand for VoIP and other converged applications to the branch office. They are more nimble and can develop services more quickly than the large carriers. For example, Masergy has been particularly responsive in releasing unique management capabilities for customers.
