Note: This is an archived article that appeared in the Teracom newsletter April 2002, and this article has not been updated to reflect technology developments since then.
Please be assured that our training courses have been updated since the time of this article!
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The hype has come and gone, and reality is starting to take its inevitable hold. Voice over IP is starting to become a mainstream solution - for the public telephone network, and for communications in-building, within your organization.
When an organization moves into a new building, traditionally, the building has to be wired twice: once for the phone system, and once for the LAN.
Can you imagine how much money could be saved if we could vaporize half of that story, and just wire the building once, running the phone system over the LAN?
And that's not all. Many organizations get a PBX to act as the intermediary between the internal phones and the public telephone network. This saves money due to getting (fewer) trunk connections to the public telephone network, and the possibility of doing your own moves and changes. But a PBX is essentially a big computer, and traditionally, we have purchased PBXs that from a computer point of view are a proprietary (secret) software application running on a proprietary operating system, running on proprietary hardware... like a Nortel or Lucent PBX, for example.
Can you imagine how much money could be saved if instead of this proprietary platform, we bought a general-purpose computer running an open operating system like UNIX, and a "soft switch" application to handle our phone calls?
And there's more. Moves and changes virtually disappear due to DHCP. Inter-city links can be used more efficiently. Upcoming Broadband IP services will eliminate the need for expen$ive T1s.
"OK, sounds good so far", you say, "but who, what, when, where, why and especially how?"
Well, you could talk to vendors; but they usually just sell you whatever their boss told them to sell you. You could try reading trade magazines; but they present a fragmented story - sometimes wrong - full of buzzwords and three-letter abbreviations they haven't defined.
Or, you could attend Teracom's Course 130:Course 130: "Voice over IP, SIP, Security, 5G and the Internet of Everything "
Voice over IP, SIP, Security, 5G and the Internet of Everything is a practical two-day course for Non-Engineering Professionals needing to understand VoIP concepts and technologies, with practical templates and step-by-step case studies on deploying VoIP in your organization that can be put to immediate use.
You'll gain a practical understanding of VoIP: IP telephony basics, VoIP equipment, software, protocols and configurations, cost comparisons with PBX and Centrex, and practical examples of deployment and migration to VoIP within the organization. We'll complete the picture with VoIP on the public telephone network: convergence and integration, and examine Web-telephony integration.
Plus, we'll cover VoIP project management: a practical guide on how to evaluate vendors and systems, make the right selection and planning to avoid disasters.
We'll provide you with an unbiased view of the technology and mainstream trends and solutions. We'll define the acronyms and explain the jargon. You'll understand where we are in the story, and where we're going. You'll build knowledge that will give you confidence to speak with vendors, technical people and management. Career-enhancing knowledge.
