If users really want to get the most out of their VoIP systems, they have to start integrating business-critical applications.
A recent IDC study, "What Lies Ahead: VoIP Applications," examines the increasing interest in and use of VoIP applications and highlights the emergence of new VoIP gateway vendors in the voice space.
According to Nora Freedman, one of the study's authors, vendors and developers are doing a good job keeping up with user demands for adding integrated applications into their voice systems, but most enterprises and organizations are slow to realize the benefits and understand how they can improve business processes.
"If you can add voice keys to business processes," Freedman said, "that's really where this type of technology fits."
Right now, according to Freedman, companies are struggling with the question "How do I embed voice into existing applications?" To add mission-critical apps to the voice system, companies were often forced to deal with an a la carte menu, meaning that they would select which features and functions they wanted from several vendors and somehow string them together.
"If the network equipment vendors want their customers and prospects to realize the true value proposition of IP telephony," Freedman said, "they must be able to improve the integration of business-critical applications – [which] have otherwise remained separate from voice -- with the critical business communications networks."
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now there is a host of vendors offering third-party application gateways that can easily add VoIP value into necessary -- and often critical -- business applications, Freedman said.
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Although most gateways are based on the Cisco CallManager platform, Freedman said, more and more are starting to support other key voice vendors, such as Avaya and Nortel Networks.
Alternatively, for customers and vendors looking for point solutions and not a suite of application or application development platforms, other vendors have emerged to fill the void. One example is Berbee, which supports Cisco with its integrated IP-based paging software solution InformaCast. Berbee offers emergency and zone paging for companies that want to centralize paging, clocks and signaling bells on a single server. Freedman said that this type of paging will most likely take hold in healthcare, government and education.
Now that the functionality is there, Freedman noted, organizations need to open a line of communication with vendors to determine which applications and features best suit their business needs and to find a way to integrate that into their existing voice deployments.
"There has to be more education on the part of the customers," she said. "Soon you'll be able to say, 'I want this,' and all of the pieces will fall into place."
The integration of more applications into a voice system will also probably move VoIP applications from a hardware-centric space to software-centric, Freedman said. In a software environment, the users running the applications will start to demand interoperability, while IT will be charged with managing the converged voice and data network.
"The line-of-business guys don't care about the architecture," she said. "They just care that it's getting done."