Allstate didn't create a blended team when it started its first test site. As a result, it was like two separate projects run by two separate groups. On one key question--would the phones be powered by electricity from a wall socket or by power-over-Ethernet technology?--the teams didn't communicate, so they didn't have the correct parts ordered, setting back the entire effort. Allstate now uses a VoIP deployment team with staffers from both departments and is cross-training those people, teaching telecom people more about networking and helping the network team learn more about telecom and the routing of voice calls. Landreth thinks certain tasks such as advanced call routing are best handled by the telecom staff and network-specific tasks should go to the network team. But she's still working out the right formula. "Talk to me in a year, and I may have a different answer," she says.
Because the technology is new, and its use is growing so fast, people with talent and experience doing VoIP implementations are hard to find--and come at a premium. Companies have two options: train or hire. Both can be more expensive than expected. "Customers often assume that there's more staff out there that knows the infrastructure than is true," Forrester's Pierce says. And while new employees may understand VoIP, they don't know much about a specific company's operations.
In-house training always sounds like the logical option, but it's both costly and slow. This isn't a couple-days-in-the-training-room kind of technology. "There's a very steep learning curve," Hobart West's Harenchar says. Based on experience and projections, she estimates it can take $15,000 of classes over nine months, plus 12 to 15 months of on-the-job experience, to fully train a network administrator to manage an enterprise VoIP system. On the other hand, outsourcing or hiring can be even more expensive. Hiring someone with VoIP expertise would cost around $40,000 above current pay scales, Harenchar says. She's doing a mix of both training and hiring.
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Business-technology managers considering VoIP need to consider a host of fundamental questions that can turn into gotchas if not carefully thought through. And not all of them can be decided by the IT team alone. Will you sacrifice sound quality or features to save money? Does your network have enough bandwidth to handle voice calls and provide high-quality sound? Can your network give voice traffic priority over E-mail and Web browsing, which aren't as affected by network delays? Is it designed to transmit VoIP packets efficiently, with low latency, or does it need to be restructured? How will you provide backup power to keep the phone system operating in case of a power failure? Do you need extra outside lines as part of that backup plan?
Businesses can't assume that their current phone systems will serve as a model for a VoIP system. "It's very difficult to do a one-for-one match," Advocate Health Care's Horn says. "To say, 'If we have a certain number of phones, we need this much bandwidth,' it just doesn't work that way." Horn allocates roughly 30% of a 1.5-Mbps T1-connection in small clinics to VoIP and about a full T1 at Advanced's hospitals and larger offices. After the systems are in place, Advanced uses tools such as metrics programs built into routers and network-monitoring tools to make sure bandwidth is allocated properly.
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