To VoIP or not to VoIP
By Falk Bleyl of THUS
23 February 2006

That's the question, comments THUS' senior product manager for VoIP.

The emergence of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) in 2005 has seen more than 50 million people register for a service across the globe. With vendors like Skype gaining market momentum and mainstream consumer awareness, U.K. companies are starting to look at the benefits VoIP can have on their business.

For businesses VoIP offers a cheap and easy way to make calls and as a result its usage is on the rise in professional environments. Furthermore, businesses are starting to realise the potential VoIP can have on day-to-day communication and are putting measures in place to ensure it is used correctly within the business.

The business benefits of VoIP

It is well acknowledged that the use of VoIP in the workplace can prove beneficial to a company's productivity. From a business standpoint, VoIP can allow far better collaboration and communication amongst staff, particularly with those working remotely. VoIP provides the ability to route calls to a direct dial number, regardless of location; whether working off site, abroad or at home. This means employees can be contacted on the same number wherever they are. Instead of diverting calls to a mobile phone when working away from the office, VoIP lets employees log in via a broadband/wireless network. This results in fewer calls being made via mobiles, reducing the mobile call costs that can be a significant outlay for most businesses.

As VoIP combines voice and data traffic over one network, it makes unified communications easier, allowing for the integration of phone, email and instant messaging (IM) applications. This means users can look up a colleague in a PC contacts list, see whether that individual is at their desk or on a phone call, and then decide how best to reach them - via phone, email or IM. For businesses with more than one site, this is a particularly important application for improving communication.

Some VoIP services can also provide users with a rich array of features such as conference calling, video conferencing, call routing (to off-site workers and between offices), and unified communications. Together these can lead to a more mobile, collaborative and efficient workforce.

Acceptable usage policies

For any business intending to allow its employees to download and use a VoIP service, there are a few procedures that should be put in place to ensure it runs smoothly with office networking environment.

One of the first steps is to ensure that employees are aware of the issues and understand how to avoid the possible risks. It is advisable for a VoIP "acceptable usage policy" to be drawn up clearly stating those VoIP applications that are appropriate for employee use.

From a technical perspective, IT departments should take the following steps to ensure their network remains safe. These include:

• Installing up-to-date virus scanners on all desktops;
  
• Ensuring that all approved VoIP clients are managed properly and that patches are applied as and when they are released by vendors;
  
• Treating the VoIP service as a supported business application and, as with any other application, thoroughly testing it before including it on the list of products that are recognised by the employer;
  
• Making potential users aware of the limitations of such a service and what the company considers acceptable and appropriate usage;
  
• Running regular device and traffic flow audits to monitor usage and identify unknown or unexpected activity on the network. Where VoIP usage is excessive or inappropriate an organisation can restrict a user's ability to install applications by locking down desktops.

IT departments should also fully familiarise themselves with the few potential risks associated with using a VoIP service:

• Some VoIP products use a peer-to-peer model, resulting in bandwidth being used to carry other individual's voice and data traffic without the user's consent or knowledge;
  
• VoIP services are designed to circumvent firewall restrictions by emulating a Web browser. This can be troublesome on a corporate network as it makes the VoIP packets difficult to identify, audit and control;
  
• IT departments will find tracking and storing user communication difficult;
  
• VoIP applications may also include further services such as video conferencing; IM and peer-to-peer file transfer. While VoIP and IM may not use much bandwidth per user, video conferencing and file transfer applications can take up significant bandwidth on the corporate network and slow other network traffic, having a serious impact on work productivity;
• VoIP may limit the performance of applications on a user's desktop because it uses desktop resources. Having unauthorised and unknown/untested applications on a company desktop may decrease the stability of a device;
  
• There may be licensing restrictions for business use.

VoIP can deliver tangible benefits to companies of all sizes. However, to protect networks against any potential vulnerabilities associated with VoIP services, businesses need to put safeguards in place and ensure employees stick to these while exploiting the advantages of this new technology.

Falk Bleyl is THUS' senior product manager VoIP.

NOTE: Total Telecom would like to make clear that the views expressed and conclusions drawn within these viewpoint articles are not necessarily those of Total Telecom or any of its associated partners.