Well, we all know that voice and data convergence can bring enormous benefits, don't we? And of course, that's true as long as we plan things properly. With a VoIP implementation, we can just sit back and be happy about the reduced costs, can't we?Well, it's often not as simple as that. Sometimes we import latent problems with our voice implementations into our data networks. Maybe, even worse, we create new problems that we didn't have before.
Some simple pointers:
- Work out what your bandwidth requirements are: voice traffic places a significant load on your network which has to be satisfied in real time. A delay in a data transaction is a nuisance; a delay in speech traffic renders the conversation unintelligible.
- Pay attention to your resilience and DR requirements. Traditional voice is still a lot more reliable than data and it's a shock for users to switch to a new, less reliable transmission medium.
- Sort out backup arrangements for your data networks. It's no use asking your users to phone in when there's a problem if the phones don't work either.
- Put in place robust support arrangements with agreed SLAs.
It's not rocket science, so by all means go ahead with convergence - but do it with your eyes open and make sure you have a robust solution in place with good fallback arrangements.
The "con" in convergence: don't think you can do it on the cheap without making proper arrangements for support and recovery.
