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‘Packetise’ to
run voice on data network
EFFECTIVE communication is the root of all successful transactions. In today’s information empowered times, communications have emerged as a core business function and the effectiveness of a company’s communication system can greatly impact its bottom line. As businesses go global, voice based communications take on a critical role. There are two key compulsions in the voice communications business today. Voice traffic - both national and international - is growing by leaps and bounds, putting tremendous pressure on existing networks. Secondly, the revenues from voice are deteriorating rapidly - leading service providers to look for options that will enable them to squeeze the last bit of efficiency out of their networks. This dual market pressure has led to an interesting development over the last decade - the evolution of IP-based voice communications. The concept of ‘packetising’ voice — breaking voice into data packets for transport — offers compelling efficiencies. This technology minimises the time that a connection is maintained between two systems, which reduces the load on the network. The trend has really picked up over the last few years. Financial services, insurance, healthcare, real estate, manufacturing, retail, entertainment, food service, transportation companies and government around the world are taking advantage of packetised voice. What does packetised voice technology do? - It turns a company’s phone system, which previously could do little more than a ring, into a multimedia communication system. Packetised voice lets enterprises and service providers run voice communications on data networks. This is possible by converting voice signals into "digital packets," which can travel over an existing data network, such as local area networks (LANs), wide area networks (WANs), and even the Internet. This solution can be globally adopted by businesses as small as 30 employees to large organisations. When digitised voice communication moves onto an existing data network, the network is then known as a "converged" network. Converged network brings in various advantages, the biggest being that it lets corporate run one network for data, video and voice. By consolidating all communications onto a single network - with centralised operations on a unified system - converged networks provide much easier management and a low cost of ownership. Converged networks also mean less equipment and therefore a reduced space requirement. But most critically, converged networks provide the potential for companies to develop new voice and data productivity applications over the same infrastructure and bandwidth that previously only ran data communications. Moreover it greatly reduces operational costs - converged communication systems can cost 50 per cent less compared with the hardware and software maintenance overhead for traditional voice networks. Research also shows that IT staff can save at least several hours a week per technician when a company switches over to a packet-based voice communications system This single network provides enterprises and service providers with investment protection. There’s no technology that has more backing or more vendor support than the Internet-based innovations driving packetised voice. This avoids the perennial problem with traditional PBX systems, which run on propriety systems. The open, standard-based frees a company from being held hostage by one company and its proprietary system. And companies don’t have to worry about its voice communication systems running into a technological dead-end if a vendor goes out of business. In more sophisticated deployments, companies running call centres can use this single network to combine inbound and outbound calls with Web communications and e-mail. Other productivity boosters include unified messaging, contact centres, personal calendars, meeting schedulers, service alerts, and information databases, among many others. The point of a unified infrastructure is not that it offers one particular "killer application" but rather opens a whole world of possibilities, which each company can tailor to its needs. A single communication
network for both data and voice also allows service providers to reduce
equipment costs and technical staff overhead; it also creates the
possibility of new, more profitable applications and services. New
services mean new revenue at the same cost. With continuously falling
voice rates and increasing data applications, an IP based network is the
ideal solution for the Service Provider. Packetised voice isn’t a
blue-sky promise of great rewards somewhere in the distant future.
Because of the fundamental efficiencies of converged networks, the
companies that have migrated to packet voice have reported immediate and
substantial returns on their investments. According to a recent study by
Sage Research, roughly 80 per cent of all companies reap the majority of
packetised voice benefits within six months of deployment. |
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