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To: Jim Oravetz who wrote (150)	5/20/2003 8:17:16 AM
From: Jim Oravetz	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 211

Messaging Software Innovations Driving VoIP Adoption By Ken Ryu, Computize Inc. -- 5/19/2003 Electronic News Voice over IP (VoIP) is on the verge to be mainstream among the Fortune 1000. Look no further than the largest software company in the world to see evidence of VoIP adoption. If you leave a voice message for a Microsoft employee, it is likely that your message will be heard through a Microsoft Outlook e-mail program instead a phone. Microsoft is using their Exchange messaging software to accomplish this VoIP integration. Besides making its employees more productive, Microsoft hopes to establish Exchange as the key software component for VoIP solutions for enterprise customers. Another major technology player is also targeting the VoIP market. Cisco is looking to become the leading hardware and networking solutions provider for VoIP. Cisco is implementing VoIP technology throughout their company. Using their own phones and VoIP switches, Cisco uses Microsoft Exchange as the main software component for VoIP messaging. Like Microsoft, Cisco will use their own products to prove how other enterprise customers can benefit using Cisco’s VoIP technology. The original promise of VoIP was to reduce those expensive long-distance bills, as well as offer the simplicity of configuring devices (IP phones). For example, if you get that big promotion to the corner office and are using a traditional PBX, your telephony administrator needs to reconfigure the PBX to get your current phone extension routed to your new executive office. This can be a complex process and requires telephony expertise. With IP telephony, the phone extension is held within the phone, so the move requires no reprogramming of the phone system. Simply unplug your phone from your small cube, plug it into the wall of your new office, and you are ready to roll. As for the long distance bill, it is true that you can save a bundle. Basically, all long-distance calls made within your company, even between different campuses, are toll-free since they are travelling over the company’s networks (true, you may need more bandwidth than you have now though). When calling outside of the company, your calls need to hop over to the Ma Bell’s phone lines, so those calls are still subject to tolls. VoIP-based services are growing rapidly from $13 billion annually in 2002 to a projected $197 billion annually in 2007, according to an industry study conducted by Insight Research (October 20, 2002). The support from major manufacturers, such as Nortel Networks and Cisco Systems, are legitimizing the technology from a hardware perspective. At the same time, software manufacturers are adding VoIP support in their messaging software to provide an even more attractive reason for customers to move to VoIP technology. The main reason VoIP has not already taken off in droves is the need for software support, as well as concerns over Quality of Service (QoS). Have you ever attended a webinar and experienced jumbled audio? That poor audio quality may be okay for your desktop or cell phone, but business customers expect error-free transmission when using their business lines. Understanding that requirement, QoS has improved dramatically over that the last couple of years. As bandwidth and networking technologies have advanced, QoS problems have decreased. In fact, the major phone companies are implementing VoIP due to the cost advantages that VoIP technologies offer over traditional analog switching. Software that helps us manage and store VoIP communications will transform the way we communicate with our colleagues more than any technology since e-mail. Some of the ease-of-use capabilities VoIP offers include being able to use your contact management software to look up names and dial phone numbers from your computer. Those features are useful, but the real promise is in the ability to record, transfer and store conversations. We already talked about the ability to retrieve voice mail from your e-mail. Now think about the ability to record conversations. Call centers that take technical calls can record conversations and post these “frequently asked questions” on their support section of their Web site. As well, if a customer has a complaint, rather than the customer service representative trying to relay the situation to his supervisor, he can simply record and e-mail the conversation so that the supervisor can determine a problem resolution. No more “he said, she said” confusion. You will see the major messaging software manufacturers integrating VoIP features into their newer releases. The good news is that much of this integration should be done fairly easy using core e-mail technology as a foundation. Importantly, the newer technology should not require much training on the part of the users. For small and mid-size businesses it may be cost prohibitive to implement enterprise-geared messaging solutions such as Microsoft Exchange. However, there is good news for these businesses. Small business e-mail and messaging solutions with VoIP capabilities that are inexpensive and easy to maintain are being introduced as well. VoIP will most likely come sooner than later, and it will offer businesses improvements in productivity. The downside is, just as with e-mail, we will need to watch what we say. You never know where your off-the-cuff statements may end up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Author Information Ken Ryu is the president of Computize Inc., a Houston, Texas-based computer reseller.