Marcelo Vieira asked from the end-user's point of view: The great question that I need to answer to my customers and to myself, but I don't know how to do, is: Why should I go to VoIP if my traditional PBX does everything I need without new investments? I don't know how to show the objectives advantages of VoIP.
John S Cosgrove took up the challenge: If your existing PBX meets all of your objectives, there is no reason to invest. Whether VOIP or any other technical investment, it should help achieve organizational missions, objectives and provide incremental improvements to critical processes. When you focus on processes that could be improved, you should look to various resources and business relationships to assist with ideas on how that might be achieved. During this process, when considering how you improve that process, you also consider not just what would solve that problem, but how that investment might improve other processes. In some cases, networking is a component to a process solution. VOIP may be able to leverage that networking solution.
Kevin Johnson: There are three easy to understand reasons for enterprise customers to migrate to IP - applications, applications, applications.
The advancements currently happening in the telephony environment - ranging from personal digital assistants (PDA) telephony integration to integration with Microsoft Exchange 2000 - are simplifying the lives of business people by turning their telephones into internet devices.
Clients with traditional PBX systems are going to be demanding these kinds of applications and it is necessary to go IP in order to get the benefits. It is easy to say that traditional PBX services are addressing all of a company's needs until these company's realize life can get simpler, easier and more effective.
Ed Basart: No one fixes something that is not broken. All voice sales are driven by problems within the organization that the existing equipment can't satisfy. If you are a large organization, the voice gear is always undergoing change, and 2 sets of infrastructure and crew are troubling. Plus, who wants to wait weeks for your telecom supplier or interconnect to make a change? VOIP allows you to take control of the voice aspect of your business, just like you do with data networking.
Joe Buzzanga: Legacy PBX systems are built on a vendor proprietary, vertically integrated model, much like the old mainframe computer market. In plain English, this means that your PBX vendor is your sole source for handsets, applications and servicing. Contrast this to the open world of computing and data networking and you begin to see why VoIP is such an exciting technology.
The promise is this: terminal devices from a wide set of standards compliant vendors at various price points and functionality levels; applications from an ecosystem of ISVs that can be installed as easily as a Windows app; simpler moves, adds and changes along with web based management and administration; tighter integration with the data networking infrastructure leading to lower costs of administration and hardware/cabling.
These benefits are not fantasies, but clearly much work remains to be done to hammer out economical, interoperable, standards compliant VoIP systems. This work is well under way in standards bodies around the world.
Finally, there is little doubt that the IP wave is inevitable; there is too much momentum and innovation around IP to derail the ultimate development of robust, cost effective, standards compliant VoIP systems. Contrast this to the moribund (sorry PBX guys) PBX business and the conclusion is inescapable that innovation and therefore the future belongs to IP and IP oriented systems.
So, today, there may be little reason to take out your PBX. But there is clearly strong reason to monitor the marketplace and understand this emerging technology and begin to experiment with it.
Paul Pierre added that specific applications may be coming along in specific organizations that might create a suitable time to switch from one infrastructure base to another.
