Blog: Your Future Voice Decision

The voice technology marketplace has seen rapid change in the last few years. Exciting new innovations, steep price drops and new entrants to the market have combined to produce a dynamic and fast-moving landscape.

When a company enters a contract for telecoms services, it only deals with a few providers. The Network Collective has a much broader experience from helping organisations of all sizes and sectors to find a deal that works for them. It’s a vantage point that enables us to spot key trends and developments…

1. SIP is becoming the default option for high-capacity PSTN

Organisations with high capacity PSTN requirements, such as call centres, are increasingly using Session Initiation Protocol or SIP to improve the flexibility and resilience of their inbound/outbound voice calls. With the added benefit of a lower price point in comparison to traditional PSTN technologies, it’s clear to see why SIP is fast gaining market share.

2. Some businesses continue to use traditional technologies

While SIP is becoming much more widespread, there is also a trend for some companies to rule out its use as it is not suitable for their needs. As a result, it is unlikely to become a truly universal option. For instance, some organisations decide to keep one PSTN line for use as an alarm system, even though usage will be low.

3. The move to hosted voice solutions

There is a gradual, long-term trend towards hosted voice solutions. This is partly being fuelled by service providers such as Microsoft, who have released cloud-based enterprise voice solutions. Take up of these solutions is slower than for other innovations such as cloud SaaS, as adoption often only happens as a commercial decision when extending the licence for an existing service. Investing in hosted voice as a new service is frequently not financially sensible when a longer term TCO is considered

4. Take up of fixed to mobile (FMC) services

This is another slow-burning trend, but companies are steadily opting to switch to FMC services when they have an opportunity to do so. Typically this would be when purchasing a new telephony system becomes necessary, either as an upgrade or due to an expansion. The range of products on the market is limited but growing, and with prices falling organisations opt to hold out for the best deal.

5. Moving to the cloud

Generally, cloud-based services have made a huge impact on business technology, bringing many benefits in terms of cost, accessibility and flexibility. However, when considering cloud based voice platforms, initial investment in relation to end user hardware (handsets, headsets etc.) and ongoing Opex outlay can be considerable, thus resulting in organisations often deciding to sweat the current assets until such a point they become unsupportable. The key upshot here is that organisations remain slow to move to cloud systems; the business case for doing so usually doesn’t stack up. However, if costs fall in future, this could change.

Is your company keeping on top of major changes? Talk to The Network Collective about how you can secure better value from your telecoms package.

Jonathan Copley, Consultant

Published on 9th June 2016

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