February 24, 2005

Voice-Over IP (VoIP) is already familiar to a lot of business people and consumers thanks to increasingly popular systems such as Vonage, but its B2B and enterprise potential is still unsure at this time.

According to a new survey from Osterman Research, 10 percent of employees use VoIP in the workplace.

"The primary driver is cost at this point," says analyst Michael Osterman. Anyone who has used Vonage can certainly attest to that. However, he is quick to add that "VoIP traditionally has been less reliable than traditional telephony with lower call quality."

This is obviously more of an obstacle for the enterprise than for the consumer who is willing to put up with these drawbacks in order for a lower phone bill.

But Osterman says that it isn't just a question of cost. "VoIP is a key component of unified communications and will permit the deployment of more sophisticated services like videoconferencing, etc. as part of an integrated communications suite."

In fact, vendors have begun to release solutions that can benefit from this kind of integrated communications approach. Meanwhile, in the telecommunications world, M&A activity is putting VoIP and network expertise together in order to provide the infrastructure for a world of integrated communications.

Right now, concludes Osterman, "For VoIP services, AT&T and Cisco lead. For VoIP software, it's Cisco. For VoIP hardware, it's also Cisco."

Source: Line 56