VoIP is the trend of the times, saving money is not important

VoIP is the future direction, but it is not always better. At the VoIP Summit held by the Association of higher education and communication experts (ACUTA) recently, the participating expert groups agreed that saving money is no longer the purpose of deploying VoIP in colleges and universities, the new demand is to explore integrated communication and recognize this inevitable development trend.

Five years ago, the vendor declared that deploying VoIP can reduce the number of administrative staff and save money by eliminating the need for a dedicated voice network. But recently, Walt Magnussen, director of telecommunications at Texas A & M University, pointed out: "We have long abandoned the demand that VoIP can save us A lot of communication costs ."

However, the school is still developing towards deploying VoIP because the PBX manufacturer is gradually eliminating the traditional tdm pbx and no longer provides the upgrade function for traditional devices, moreover, they vigorously promote VoIP servers and gateway devices that can connect VoIP devices to traditional devices. This will greatly increase the speed of deploying VoIP on campus.

You don't need to spend much or save much.

In fact, Texas A & M University is preparing to purchase the VoIP Centrex service, Magnussen said, schools believe that VoIP is an inevitable trend, and now is the time to transition to VoIP.

However, the Board of Directors of the school still sticks to the goal of saving money, and their understanding of VoIP is still at the stage of saving money. Magnussen said it may take some effort to persuade them to accept the reality that deploying VoIP cannot save money.

Magnussen explained: "We will not spend more money on VoIP, nor save a lot of money ." Although the cost of VoIP equipment is low, the service life is shorter than that of traditional TDM, he said. In addition, training is required, and a higher level of maintenance technology is required.

Magnussen says it is hard for schools to quickly migrate from TDM to VoIP, which costs $18 million, more than the annual budget of his department. He said: "universities with high VoIP penetration rates are all small schools that can pay off all deployment costs at a time ."

Pat Todus, head of the Information Technology Department at Northwestern University, said the gradual transition was easier for faculty and staff. Because the upgrade of the device is only the first step, and the user's habits are another practical problem that needs to be carefully considered, such as soft phone. "Teachers don't want to use soft phones. They are used to using desk phones," she said ."

Todus said that is why Northwestern University chose a vendor with both traditional TDM and VoIP technologies. They have devices that can connect to the school's legacy TDM switch, so they can run both VoIP and TDM at the same time until the transition to VoIP is complete.

Todus also said she liked the geographic diversity brought about by VoIP. She said that if VoIP in Chicago is paralyzed by a disaster, devices in other regions can be put into use immediately to ensure smooth voice services.

Transition to VoIP

Tammy Closs, IT Director at Duke University and Medical Center, said that she is deploying VoIP to reduce the number of different system platforms that she and her colleagues must maintain so that they can improve productivity.

The transformation to VoIP means that schools can reduce the amount of TDM speech and thus reduce the number of professionals. "We may never integrate into one platform, but reducing the number of platforms makes management easier," she said ."

In addition, users may not be aware of some unexpected benefits of VoIP. She said: "We have a traditional voice system, so I have never heard people complain to me that they need killer applications that only VoIP can provide ." However, VoIP may be a killer application of the IT department, which can simplify voice and data management. "VoIP helps to manage infrastructure and services," she said ."

Closs said the telephone services in university dormitories face competition for mobile phones and broadband Internet that supports commercial VoIP services such as Vonage and Skype.

When the school tries to find a way to install cheap phone numbers for the professor's office, the user seems to have chosen the same path.

Todus said Northwestern University is reversing this trend by providing VoIP and Unified Communication packaging solutions for various departments, including email and instant messaging.

Magnussen said schools that have not yet begun their transformation to VoIP should try to train their telecommunications and data network staff to familiarize themselves with their respective technologies. This helps reduce internal consumption and provide internal skills. He said: "schools that don't have a lot of hands will be overwhelmed ."

Advantages and problems of deploying VoIP on campus
Advantages	Problem
Low device cost	The service life is inferior to that of TDM.
Easy to scale and quick scale upgrade	Requires training and high deployment cost
Reduce TMD speech volume and geographic diversity	Prevents receipt of defective and counterfeit goods
Reduces the daily maintenance workload and number of professionals for different voice systems	It is best to select a vendor with both TMD and IP experience. Efforts should be made to train data and telecom personnel

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