While there is no overlooking the opportunities VoIP brings to the telecommunications industry, there are still a number of concerns from cost to complexity with the VoIP migration path.
During a recent TMC (News - Alert) Webinar event, “The Best of Both Worlds: Legacy Handsets in a VoIP Environment,” sponsored by Citel, company officials highlighted the different considerations to investigate before migrating to VoIP.
Citel is a provider of VoIP solutions that make it possible for SMBs, large enterprises and service providers leverage their existing PBX (News - Alert) infrastructure and still migrate to the benefits of IP.
The company’s Portico TVA platform enables companies to migrate to VoIP by leveraging their existing cabling infrastructure and business phones while doing away with their PBX.
Guest presenters Andrew Davies, senior Sales Engineer at Citel Technologies (News - Alert) U.K. and Ian Gomm, vice president of Sales and Marketing at Citel Technologies, Inc. also highlighted alternatives to the “rip and replace” scenario during the Webinar and how Citel’s Portico TVA can enable companies to reduce the costs and time involved with migrating to VoIP.
So what are the options?
“One option is do nothing,” Ian told Webinar attendees.
Staying with the system that’s there can be expensive and there is certainly limited flexibility. “Because more and more of the vendors out there are dealing with IP and support for the PBX market is gradually declining,” Ian said.
There is also the ‘rip and replace’ scenario which, Ian said can be expensive and disruptive.
Finally there is the Citel solution, which Ian noted allows customers or resellers to choose a premise-based or hosted IP-PBX solution - or get rid of their PBX and even maintain their existing cabling infrastructure and handsets and still get all the benefits of IP telephony.
Check out the archived version of the Webinar HERE.
To find out more about Citel, visit the company at ITEXPO West 2010. To be held Oct. 4 to 6 in Los Angeles, ITEXPO (News - Alert) is the world’s premier IP communications event. Visit Citel in booth #340. Don’t wait. Register now.
Stefania Viscusi is an assignment editor for TMCnet, covering voice and Voice over IP technologies. She also oversees production of TMCnet's e-Newsletters in the areas of Internet telephony and speech technology. To read more of Stefania's articles, please visit her columnist page.Edited by
Stefania Viscusi
