Six Options for Managed IP Communications

Many traditional businesses maintain separate networks for data and voice communication. With a converged voice-and-data network, companies can often reduce costs and gain significant productivity benefits.

However, the cost of implementing and managing the solution internally can be prohibitive. A more affordable option is to out-task IP communications to a managed services provider. This arrangement avoids initial CapEx and provides economies of scale -- because the service provider already owns the required infrastructure.

You can choose from several options for managed IP communications services. The following describes typical managed IP communications service offerings, and how you can apply them.

Business IP Telephony Services
This includes both subscriber and group calling services. Companies that need sophisticated PBX features can use a managed IP telephony service. Many small businesses can also receive the functionality that they require with a managed IP telephony solution.

Site-to-Site Voice
This service is really useful for companies with several branch offices that communicate regularly. A site-to-site voice service enables you to call from one site to another using the service provider's voice-over-IP (VoIP) infrastructure, avoiding long-distance toll costs. You can maintain a private dial plan, including support for simple 4-digit dialing.

Public Switched Telephone Network Access
Access to the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN) can be enabled centrally over the service provider's network. Central PSTN access provides economies of scale, which, in turn, help reduce your costs.

Unified Messaging
These capabilities enable you to retrieve and respond to voice, fax, and e-mail messages from any phone or PC within your organization. Your team can check any type of message from the same inbox -- either the voicemail box, accessed from a phone, or the e-mail inbox, accessed from a computer. Rules-based call routing and speech recognition can further enhance usage for you, and your callers.

Voice over VPN
This service can reduce toll charges for your telecommuters and mobile team members. Using an IP phone from home, or SoftPhone software on your laptop during travel, you can easily make voice calls over the same, secure Virtual Private Network connection that's used to access data network applications.

Other Enhanced Services
You can also increase productivity by delivering new applications and information directly to your team's IP phones. As part of a managed IP telephony service, providers can provide customized Extensible Markup Language (XML) applications -- for example, to access team calendar information or read news stories relevant to your business.

Contact a managed service provider, to learn more about these IP communication capabilities, and the associated cost savings or productivity benefits. Most providers will have customer case studies for your consideration.

Hosted Phone System Saves Time, Money and Hassles

If you've ever had to add or move employees, you know that one of the biggest hassles is dealing with the telephone system. While many companies are deploying IP-based phone systems to ease their PBX hassles, still others are turning to hosted phone systems to eliminate their ongoing operation and management responsibly altogether.

Hosted phone systems work especially well for companies that have highly mobile employees. With a hosted system, employees can just log into the system to automatically forward calls to another designated number.

One big advantage: employees need only give their clients one phone number. This eliminates the complexity of dealing with multiple phone numbers and voice mail systems.

Helios Realty, part of Real Living, the Midwest's largest independent real estate firm, has taken advantage of this concept. Helios relies on Cisco-Powered partner Geckotech to provide a scalable voice and data infrastructure for its highly mobile workforce of real estate agents, while still providing the highest level of professional service.

How Hosting Saves Time
Helios Realty has no assigned desks. When agents arrive in the office, they sit down at any open desk and type in a 3-digit code. This reprograms that phone as their office line while they're there. When agents leave the office, they can log in again and automatically forward calls over to their cell phone or voice mail.

Without ever investing in a new phone system, Helios can add agents simply by adding phone numbers. The company never has to worry about having enough "lines," because VoIP is based on bandwidth, not phone lines. The real estate firm also has itemized billing through Geckotech, so it can budget based on the number of agents.

How Hosting Saves Money
The Geckotech system saves Helios money in two ways. "Geckotech's mobility saves us money each month on rent and infrastructure," says Andrew Magliochetti, a principal with Helios Realty. "When employees are in the office they are instantly connected. We never have to pay for onsite maintenance to move a phone around, and we only need room for one-third of our workforce."

By using an outsourced IP phone system, Helios has said, its employees are completely mobile and free to communicate at will with their customers. Access to voicemail, intercoms, conference bridges, and 4-digit company-wide dialing is easier as well.

Though phone systems are crucial to most businesses, it is not crucial that they own them, as Helios has discovered.

If the responsibilities of owning, operating, managing and updating a phone system are an unwelcome hassle, then perhaps you should consider a hosted solution for your business.