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Survivor's Guide to 2005: Digital Convergence: Page 4 of 8

If your enterprise has a WAN, using an IP infrastructure for voice will not only reduce your telephone bill and your reliance on the phone company to route calls; by using compression techniques like G.711 with silence suppression, you can add up a bandwidth savings on circuits (calls) using VoIP instead of analog trunk lines.

New IP voice applications are possible with the adoption of the Session Initiation Protocol. SIP uses a peer-to-peer scheme that gives endpoints the intelligence to initiate calls and tap into other network services. However, as exciting as SIP is, beware of empty promises. Few vendors have significant third-party support for SIP endpoints.

Microsoft's plans for SIP include new features in its forthcoming Istanbul desktop OS in 2005. Microsoft, an early proponent of SIP, claims Istanbul will support PBX systems from competing vendors. It remains to be seen how far Microsoft will venture into VoIP.

Converged call centers can use applications running over IP--such as CRM and helpdesk software--and save you money by eliminating the need to administer separate applications on the legacy PBX. Key considerations in moving to an IP call center are remote access and integration. Remote agents can field calls from any location, and routing those calls can be done using the corporate LAN/WAN and not the phone company, saving the enterprise toll charges.

So far, the shift in call centers has been done by small and midsize companies that haven't invested in call agents and legacy equipment to the same extent as larger organizations.