Survivor's Guide to 2007: Messaging & Collaboration: Page 4 of 9

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Still, there are some bright spots. In the same poll, 26 percent said that their VoIP systems perform as well or better than conventional PBXs. Industry standards are ironed out. Hosted options have matured.

For many, it's simply a question of freeing up money to switch: The initial capital expenditure is the single biggest obstacle to VoIP adoption, according to our readers, with network upgrades coming in second. Voice is not just another application on the network. Real-time transactions, such as VoIP, require a high level of reliability, and guaranteeing enough bandwidth at the core, branch and end node isn't cheap.

Many companies put hard IP phones in a separate VLAN or subnet, and assign a higher priority to VoIP subnets and networks when bandwidth is crunched. But this creates admin overhead as individual ports must be reconfigured. Soft IP phones, common for laptop users, cannot reside on the VoIP and data networks simultaneously. This also assumes that your edge switches support VLANs.

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