What are the Top 3 Most Formidable Impediments to Business Success with IP telephony?


For those businesses nose diving into the voip world; there are a few worries that you may want to ponder before spending those bucks.  Rest assured Voip is no doubt going to be the next big technological advance in business communication; but overcoming the hurdles is a rather difficult and often times frustrating process.  It’s important to keep in mind that voip has been around for about 10 years and in those 10 years a lot of progress has been made; but still- anytime you jump into a new technology there will be obstacles to overcome and challenges to meet.

 
The first and perhaps biggest worry on businesses minds when it comes to business voip is security.  After all, you don’t want to worry about people smarter than you hacking into your business voip communication means and grabbing up all your company secrets.  Security has and will continue to be a hurdle that Voip providers will continue to improve over the next few years.  Areas that are generally susceptible include Internet Protocol phones, broadband modems, soft switches, media gateways, and LAN segments.  Overcoming these problems means putting forth a little technology of your own by incorporating physical security- locating an Ethernet switch and keeping constant victuals and monitoring on that Ethernet switch, depending a lot upon your IP telephony companies track record.  Better encryptions and authenticity standards in the protocols used will also help eliminate security threats; as well as securing wireless networks.

Second major impediment to business voip for those wanting to incorporate this into their work life is bandwidth management.  Just as with any Internet provider; your IP telephony is only as good as the service provider you have.  Therefore, quality of service from your IP telephony company is a key to making your business voip a success.  You will find that clarity is often a big issue with business voip; as well as, delay time- nothing more frustrating than that; and lastly echo.  When looking for bandwidth management; you need to consider their quality of service or their QOS.  Factors to ask your bandwidth provider includes questions in regards to throughput range, continuous connection and delay in transfer.

The third and final impediment that businesses will have to overcome in order to have success with business voip is change.  Most businesses have land lines and currently use some type of phone system that in no way was cheap; finding success in business voip means changing business, which in code means changing people’s minds about the future of business when it comes to technology.  Although the thought of operating a business using voip sounds attractive- it also sounds complicated and as they say, “no one likes change”.  For business voip to be successful; people will have to fully understand and see for themselves the benefits of voip for sometime before they take the plunge.