"The first thing that attracts companies to VoIP is the promise of cost savings," Stofega says. "But that's a tricky proposition. Yes, companies can reduce toll charges by keeping calls inside the corporate network; and there's the promise of network convergence, and the idea of collapsing two networks into one. But you have to upgrade the data network to do this, and that's where the trouble comes in."
Of course, Stofega points out that your local area network (LAN) probably needs an upgrade anyway --- most enterprise networks do, he says --- so the effort and expense might be necessary in any case. All the same, network upgrades and the acquisition of VoIP network equipment requires capital spending and, for many organizations, anything that can help them avoid capital expenses is a good thing.
In theory, managed VoIP services allow enterprises to trade capital expenses for regular fees, but in practice, things are a little more complicated. "What if your service provider says his service only works with Cisco equipment, and you're not a Cisco shop?" Machinowinski asks. "All of a sudden, it's a big expense."
Indeed, ultimately the decision should, and usually does, boil down to two things: Do you have the in-house expertise to deploy and maintain VoIP yourself, and do you trust a managed VoIP service provider to maintain what is, after all one of the most critical systems of any business? "The big argument around managed services is whether you trust someone to come in and manage your stuff," he says. "One thing that tilts things in favor of managed services is that VoIP is not just data. It adds all kinds of complexity, and you have to ask, do you really want to do all of this stuff yourself?"
The problem, Stofega says, is that doing it all yourself often means acquiring new expertise, and that's never and easy thing. "Typically, people say that VoIP is all just packets, but there are things about voice that the telephony guys have always known, and that make managing voice more than a question of managing packets," he says. "At the smaller end of the business spectrum, you simply may not have the expertise in the company anyway. You have to wonder if you'd rather outsource VoIP, or have someone on the payroll every month with that expertise."
Indeed, that consideration makes manages VoIP a particularly attractive option to smaller organizations, but the same thing can attract large enterprises seeking to offload yet more of their IT operations. "If you have a large organization, then it usually makes sense to have It people on staff, and some of them can certainly be voice people," Machinowinski says. "But a lot of large organizations outsource a lot of the IT already, so this could be part of that. There's not easy equation between size and inclination to outsource."
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.
