Voice/data responsibilities shifting, survey shows

Steve recently completed a survey of visitors to the Webtorials site concerning their plans for using voice over IP. A white paper based on the survey, which was sponsored in part by Nortel and Sprint, will be available in a month to six weeks. However, this week we’re going to share a few of the highlights to whet your appetite.

From a very high level, there were few really surprising findings. That’s actually good, in that the survey confirms that a lot of what we’ve been discussing matches up with your interests in VoIP.

The people responding to the survey were, we think, typical of the readership of this newsletter and the Webtorials community. And looking at the people who are willing to respond to a questionnaire on VoIP helps determine the validity of the information and the makeup of the community that is sufficiently interested in the information to take the time to respond.

The mix of voice/data responsibility that the respondents have is interesting. Thirty-nine percent are primarily responsible for data networking in their jobs, 37% have a roughly 50/50 mix of voice and data, and the remaining 24% are primarily responsible for voice networking.

This mix might represent a shift in typical responsibilities as the industry becomes more accepting of voice/data convergence. A year ago, Steve surveyed a different yet quite similar community for his 2002 VoIP study. In that survey, about half of the respondents were primarily data people, and 23% had a 50/50 mix. The percentage that was voice was roughly the same – so the primary shift has occurred from the data population to the voice/data population.