Do you need a Network Engineer to maintain your phone system?

If you answered yes to that question, then you're doing it wrong.

The IP-PBX came onto the Telecom scene in a big way several years ago, and finally the IT Department was able to fully control Voice Communications over "their" network.

Watch out what you wish for.

So how has all this turned out? Well it turns out that running all this voice traffic over the existing network required some upgrades to the infrastructure. You just doubled the amount of endpoints you are dealing with. Real-time voice communications is not a very forgiving application either, and QoS capable routers are a must. Oh, and do you really want everything on the same media? Maybe new cable plant would be better. Then there was the question of power. We can't have all those clumsy power supply "bricks" cluttering up the desktop now can we? OK, upgrade all the switches to PoE.

But hey, at least you could move a phone from one office to another without getting the "phone guy" in to punch down some cross-connects right?

The benefits of the premised based IP-PBX have been greatly exaggerated. It is a bear to maintain. The desktop hardware itself is not cheap and has to be added to your network maintenance plan from the manufacturer. Have you ever tried to analyze your Smartnet contract? The "simple" guide to understanding your contract is 25 pages!! And that's just the guide! I'd rather stick pins in my eyes.

Why are you doing this?

Well you did after all, make the upgrades so your network is more robust than ever. As a matter of fact you probably have less internal data traffic on your network now than you did when the IP-PBX was first deployed. But how can this be in the age of "big data"? Because at least some of your data is now in the Cloud, and the rest is either virtualized in-house or some form of Hybrid Cloud. The result is a very efficient network infrastructure with optimized throughput. A valuable investment that will continue to serve the organization well for the next few years at least.

And that IP-phone sitting on the desktop? It's a relic. You're driving a jalopy on the Autobahn. But you can upgrade right? Yeah, try getting that one approved.

The time has come for ALL premise based systems to be put out of your misery. Cloud-based voice has come of age and it is sooo much better than anything else that it's not even a debatable topic. Think about it: You're interfacing 1980's T-1 technology (ISDN PRI, look it up!) to your gigabit network in order to talk (literally, talk) to the outside world. Not only is that an inferior technology platform but the cost goes away completely by connecting directly to the Cloud!

Moves Adds and Changes? All done through a web portal that any 12yo could manage. And they're part of the service.

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: You've built the infrastructure to efficiently handle voice traffic on your internal IP-network, why haven't you taken advantage of The Cloud. Think you have "too many" phones? Wrong. This stuff scales. Redundancy? Built-in. Flexible, responsive service, new feature deployment is a snap.

You really need to look into this. The war is already over.

Steve Melillo
LineSpeed LLC
201-596-4000, x103