Some people think that having a VOIP telephone system will eliminate their long distance charges.  The short answer is that a new AVAYA IP Office with VOIP will eliminate only some of your long distance charges (remote users, office to office calls, etc..) but the details of that story should be covered in another post. 

Let’s talk long distance ONLY and how $ 400/month or more can be vastly reduced.  A powerful solution from VoSky (www.vosky.com) leverages Skype technology to bring you outbound calls placed from your current phone system out over the internet.  The VoSky box is installed (logically) in between your current phone system and your incoming internet connection.  A few ports of your phone system are programmed for all outbound long distance calls which routes them into the Vosky box and out over the internet.  For a small monthly fee for your Skype membership, you receive significantly reduced long distance charges.  One ITN client reduced their monthly long distance bill from $ 5,000 to $ 800 per month!   The VoSky system can be installed and work with any phone system and will be a powerful technology to reduce costs.

VOIP has been “all the buzz” the last year or two and touted as the next big tool for business, but is it really a good fit for you?  If new Ethernet switches are considered in the budget, then the overall cost of VOIP is usually higher than Digital.  Digital would never require re-wiring the office where VOIP might.  Having VOIP requires the separation of voice traffic and data traffic, or the execution of a network assessment to see how well the “network” will handle the addition of voice if voice (VOIP) and data traffic were converged. 

We take a different approach because the built-in features of the latest generation of VOIP systems are also available on the AVAYA IP Office in the digital configuration too!  Remote workers, quick phone moves, and “hotel-ing” are the primary benefits to VOIP.  The AVAYA IP Office has the ability to have VOIP, Digital, and Analog devices ALL working off of the same phone system therefore we can configure your office to be “all digital” while having your remote users on VOIP!  ITN can program the ability to do “hotel-ing” on any group of phones allowing for random access for transient workers.  When you look at the big picture, VOIP is not the answer for every business.  Maybe our competitors tout VOIP because their systems won’t do digital? 

The iPad, another WLAN device on ITN’s MERU wireless network!

A week or two ago, the iPad was launched.  Most folks saw the size, performance, and well thought out features of the iPad as the immediate draws.  At ITN, the iPad suggests to us another serious movement towards mobility.  The iPad has the ability to connect to all four recognized WiFi standards;  A/B/G/N.  HP and other major manufacturers working on their tablet sized computers suggest clearly that our future is about mobility and that these mobile devices will need to connect at greater and greater speeds and performance.  That is where the “enterprise level” wireless LAN from MERU Networks and ITN comes in!  Imagine an educational environment or office environment where collaborative work can be done without being constrained to your desk.  This new mobile environment will require the strongest and best in wireless connectivity including slice of time fairness, QOS rated voice, virtual cell technology, and air traffic control functionality of controller based traffic.