A US study into the perceived benefits of IP telephony (IPT), commissioned by networking giant Cisco Systems, reports productivity gains and cost savings among all types of employees. Cisco SA says the findings mirror its local experience, and reports significant uptake.
The company outsourced the independent study to Sage Research, which found that more than two-thirds of both IT-focused and non-IT-focused respondents realise comparable benefits from the technology.
Raymond Janse van Rensburg, Cisco SA consulting systems engineer, says the most direct savings from IPT relate to cabling. "So long as your cabling is Category 5 or up (voice- and data-convergent cabling), you can run both IP phones and PCs off a single network point.
"In a greenfields environment (a new office), it is easiest to see the savings. One cable takes care of telephony and computing."
IPT functions on the premise that one network, which uses Internet Protocol (IP), a data transmission protocol rather than a circuit switched telephony network, can manage both kinds of traffic.
Says Janse van Rensburg: "Moves, adds and changes (the re-cabling or re-locating needed when offices expand or users move around), are also made easier through IPT, since there is one standard network point. A simpler way to relocate (one simply unplugs in one place and plugs in at another point) means the employee doesn`t sit around, waiting for red tape to clear up or a technician to arrive."
Gains explained
The study found that while cost savings was cited as an IPT deployment driver by 75% of those surveyed, productivity savings was cited by more than 60%. "Most surprising was that the productivity benefits were felt by both IT and non-IT workers. In another unanticipated finding, 66% of the respondents said they perceive IPT deployment as giving them a competitive advantage," the study reports.
Kathryn Korostoff, president of Sage Research, says 72% of IT-focused employees realised benefits, compared with 71% of non-IT employees. In the first instance, workers saved 1.5 hours on every move, whereas the second group could fit in three more moves per year with the time saved on moving to a new workstation.
"This research shows that the rewards for South African organisations switching to an IPT system are real and compelling," says Janse van Rensburg. "The growing evidence of productivity benefits and cost savings from IPT has created a surge in demand from SA customers looking for a competitive advantage in today`s business environment."
He names Dimension Data`s new Bryanston campus as Cisco`s largest local installation, with 3 200 users. "But it benefits companies of all sizes, across industries," he adds. "Most organisations experience huge employee location churn, and will benefit from this."
Janse van Rensburg says the quality difference between an IP-voice call and a traditional PABX call is insignificant. "Quality of service mechanisms already in place in most campus and wide-area network environments assure that quality," he adds. "Latency queuing mechanisms take out delay, latency and jitter previously associated with voice-over-data calls."
Additional benefits include logging into any IP phone, so that to all intents and purposes, the new phone "becomes" the user`s own phone - which in turn saves more on infrastructure. Roving users can have the same extension and class of service (eg the right to phone internationally if they are allowed to do so at the office) at home or at a branch office.
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