He Who Hesitates Fears Cost
Benefits abound, drawbacks are fading and, in the long run, VoIP is cost-effective. So why the trepidation?
- By Paul Korzeniowski
- 04/01/09
VOICE OVER IP (VoIP) has been infiltrating campus networks, but more like stray weeds in an unattended garden than like a well-planned crop. Trouble is, in most instances, moving directly from a PBX or Centrex service to VoIP represents a shift too costly and dramatic for many academic institutions to undertake. Instead, schools have been deploying a few VoIP connections here and there, and gradually growing those numbers. While many organizations now have at least some VoIP phones in place, most are still in the process of making the transition from traditional to IP-based phone services.
VoIP: Why--or Why Not?
Academic institutions are interested in VoIP for a number of reasons: First, the technology is simpler to deploy and manage than traditional phone services. Schools can consolidate their voice and data networking chores by running both on a converged network and managing them with single set of tools. Plus, VoIP enables organizations to deploy modern applications such as unified communications (UC) and video phone calls. Consequently, a wide range of products is available from suppliers such as Avaya, Alcatel, 3Com, Cisco, Nortel, Mitel, and Siemens. In addition, open source VoIP solutions recently have become more common (see "Open Source Meets VoIP").
Yet, while VoIP is enticing, it also presents institutions with many challenges. First up is the broad reach of voice systems, which is all-encompassing. On campuses spanning hundreds of acres and supporting thousands, tens of thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of students, faculty, and staff, deployment of VoIP often requires large, complicated infrastructure upgrades. Consequently, prices for these systems start in the six-figure range and can quickly shoot past the $1 million mark-- and keep going. As a result, academic institutions have been moving to VoIP at an incremental pace rather than as a more dramatic "overnight" rollout. Still, the potential benefits of moving to VoIP have sparked real interest.
"Isn't everyone thinking about deploying VoIP?" asks Jennifer Van Horn, manager of network distribution telecommunications infrastructure at Indiana University. But it's evident that for tech administrators, there has been a disconnect between thinking about it and actually deploying it, because the decision impacts literally all employees, faculty, and students. And while in the scheme of things internet access has become a recent must-have, being able to pick up a phone and reach a cohort has been an expected service for decades--and there is a hesitancy to mess with that expectation. But "decades" also refers to how long it's been since many universities installed their current voice systems…