"You can't put an ad in the paper to hire a VoIP engineer. We'll be doing a lot of in-house training," he said.
While some solution providers see 2005 as a year to bulk up their IP telephony practices, others plan to jump into the market for the first time.
"We probably will be investing this year to get involved [in VoIP], adding people, getting people cross-trained," said Steve Thorpe, president of Adaptive Communications, a solution provider in Portsmouth, N.H.
Thorpe estimates Adaptive Communications will have to spend $250,000 to ramp up an IP telephony practice for sales opportunities he expects to see in the next two to three years.
"There has been a lot of industry buzz over VoIP in the last couple of years, but now we see our customer base getting ready to take advantage of the technology," Thorpe said, adding that VoIP would complement his current security focus.
Adaptive Communications has been talking with vendor partner Nortel Networks for 18 months about jumping into IP communications and will move ahead with Nortel when the time is right, he said.
In addition to security, another technology that complements IP telephony sales is wireless, said John Freres, president of Meridian IT Solutions, a Cisco partner in Schaumburg, Ill., that expects the volume of its VoIP sales opportunities to double in 2005.
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
