TechNO Expo

We have seen strides in understanding the VOIP deployment steps. Several years ago, NACR crafted a service to assist and verify the data network configurations needed to support quality voice. At first, this offer seemed to offend data network professionals whose networks delivered outstanding service to data applications. My team calls this the I-don’t-know-what-I-don’t-know syndrome. Today, there has been a huge upswing in the number of IT leaders that recognize that their network will need some configuration work in anticipation of the implementation. Our offer is now a welcome part of the package instead of an implied criticism.

Our customers are comfortable with VOIP infrastructure, but at the desktop, VOIP is adopted more selectively. If the project calls for new phones, businesses are quite likely to purchase IP telephones. If the project involves an upgrade and does not dictate new phones, the move to IP at the desktop is extremely low. I think we will see a dramatic upsurge in adoption as the workforce demographics shift to include a majority of younger workers. Younger workers will expect office communications capabilities to rival the technology they routinely use at home. Businesses hoping to retain this more limited workforce will want to meet those expectations. Attractively priced IP/SIP telephones with color displays will trigger the aggressive move to VOIP at the desktop.

Dale Klein
President, Parallel Technologies, St. Louis Park

These days, “VOIP” is used to de-scribe anything from Skype running on your personal laptop to commercial and enterprise deployments. Parallel concerns itself with the latter business-class unified communications systems, which integrate secure call processing into a company’s network and application strategy. From our perspective, VOIP has moved beyond the early adopters and is well established in the mainstream.

The biggest challenge surrounding VOIP has nothing to do with the technology itself, but has everything to do with leveraging applications to achieve corporate objectives. This is a paradigm shift for most companies as they have always thought of voice solutions as just delivering dial tone.

IP voice communications technology is improving and evolving. From the desktop to the service provider’s core, bandwidth is growing and routing is becoming more efficient to handle not just the migration of phone calls to IP but also the inevitable convergence of many other applications such as streaming video and hosted software.