Have you ever run into an issue with over head paging and your IP based phone system?  Normally this is not an issue, if all else fails, you can always get an analog adapter and hook it up to your IP based phone system as another extension. The problem is when you have a hosted/hybrid type phone system like the PBXtra from Fonality.This is a problem because first Fonality will not want you to install a paging system, second they will charge you extra for a customer provided device requisition.Once you get over the first hurdle, the second option is real easy. We have successfully setup IP based paging systems from companies like Bogen. They offer a variety of systems even horns with built-in amplifiers. The most cost effective solution is to get one driver and multiple horns to cover the entire area and remember you can even have paging in remote offices/warehouses since you have an IP based phone system. 

You’ve made an investment in IP (internet protocol) voice infrastructure that uses you data network. You are already enjoying lower maintenance costs, quick add/removal of voice nodes and lower infrastructure costs, it’s now time to start thinking outside the box.Since the same infrastructure now carries voice that used to carry data only, you can start thinking of how you can deploy voice devices in areas that were cost prohibitive to reach in the past. You can use WiFi or optical bridges to spread your reach, you can use the same infrastructure not only for voice but also for data and security.So once you have a location “lit” up with IP connectivity, you can use the same pipe for data, voice and devices like cameras for security and sensors for temperature/humidity, etc. The possibilities are endless; deploy paging speakers and horns that connect via WiFi, deploy IP cams or remote door locks for security or employee clock-in devices and enjoy the benefits and simplicity of putting other services over IP. It’s not just for data and voice anymore!

I’ve talked about several benefits of IP based phone systems, some well-known some not so.One important benefit that multi location companies get from rolling out an IP phone system is the location connectivity over IP feature.We internally use this feature and so do most of our clients with multiple locations. The beauty of this feature is the ease of connecting your branch offices for voice communications so users can seamlessly connect with users at other branches.If you already have a data network in place for branch office connectivity, then you can use the same connection for voice. You can even configure your phone system to make the call go over the IP connection to the branch and then dial out from the local branch, making your calls to the cities with branch offices, essentially free. Combine this feature with presence, awareness and other features, and you can see how powerful such seamless connectivity option can be for user productivity and customer satisfaction. 

Many enterprises have already deployed OCS 2007. I’ve tested it and it’s a great product, I like the proprietary codec that offers excellent voice quality, the ease of voice/video conferencing and one platform that delivers IM, audio and video.The only thing that was missing from OCS 2007 that was stopping us from deploying it internally was the requirement of a VoIP gateway to connect to the phone company. This is no longer an issue! OCS 2007 R2 supports SIP trunks along with a host of other features:

• Dial-in audio conferencing
• Desktop sharing
• Persistent group chat
• Attendant console and delegation
• Response group
• Mobility and single number reach

OCS 2007 R2, like most Microsoft products, offers ease of access from any device, any where. Clients can be connected via hard phones, software clients on PCs, software clients on handhelds, there is even a web based client software to use without installation.So what is holding back most of the other enterprises that have not deployed OCS? I think it’s the heavy resource requirements that OCS has. Microsoft documentation says a dual core CPU is recommended, this says a lot. In addition to the hardware, OCS requires several other software modules to be in place like IIS, .Net framework, in some cases SQL. 

Since hurricane Ike, the home town of our parent company, Houston, TX suffered major power outages. Glad that no one was hurt, the next big thing to overcome was to find fuel to keep the generators going for weeks on end. This proved to be the tougher than we anticipated as gas stations quickly ran out of fuel and there were long lines of cars waiting to fuel up (I believe tankers full of fuel were stopped outside of town.)

Through this ordeal, we did learn some intricate details about disaster recovery.

Most companies that had services through companies like Cbeyond (who tie SIP trunks to their internet lines) were affected to some extent. The beauty of the Cbeyond circuits was that companies could login to their web control panels and forward their critical numbers to alternate phone lines that were operational. So in total disaster, you can keep working, although in a crippled mode.

This is great, but got me thinking. SIP trunks through a SIP trunk provider (that didn’t care about connectivity) would prove more beneficial as users could simply take their phone systems anywhere that had high speed internet connectivity and get back to normal business within hours if not minutes. This would have meant, no change in process and your phones ring like normal, critical for companies that take orders via phone.

Maybe Cbeyond will open up at some point and allow users to connect to their SIP trunks no matter how the user is getting to the internet, that will be an excellent capability to have during a disaster.

I know, saving on long distance is just a negligibly small portion of the total saving to be enjoyed by switching to enterprise VoIP but how can you really save on long distance?

So all of the systems that we have deployed, what was the easiest so far? It appears that the best experience so far has been with Allworx. We are not yet partnered with Allworx, but it is on a priority list.

Out of all the systems, Allworx setup was the easiest and quickest to deploy. No issues with phones finding and connecting to system at all. Nice work Allworx!

A PhoneTree, that is. Do you have the need to get a message out to multiple subscribers? Do you spend countless hours calling customers to remind them that payment is past due? Cancelling all of your appointments for tomorrow? Let the PhoneTree do it for you. In the medical field? check this out.. http://www.phonetree.com/health/roi.htm , It is a no-show ROI calculator. I think it speaks for itself.

I have a customer in the Natural Gas business that I recently installed PhoneTree, and in just the first month they bragged about a reduction of about 6 man hours per week in processing envelopes for cancellations plus their disconnect rate dropped from around 1000 to about 600. The feedback that they receive? “Thank you for calling to remind me that my payment was overdue!”

The way it works is simple; You install a USB or internal peripheral card to interface to your phone lines.

Select your list of contacts that you would like to call, this list can be imported as a text file from most any CRM or billing software capable of exporting to text.

Record your message; you can record or use the built in text to speech engine. You will also need to build a script consisting of “snippets”. These snippets can include “custom” values that you exported in your text file, such as customer name, account number, due date, amont overdue, etc..The text to speech engine will pick up the text from theses custom fields and read them to the called party. Now, determine the calling times; of course you want to check with your local laws to determine what times you are legally allowed to call your customers.

Once you have completed these steps, click the “Start Calls” button and the PhoneTree unit will begin calling. The out of box experience was great…it took around two hours to get the unit installed, the list imported and PhoneTree scripted.

PhoneTree also offers a 30-day, no questions asked, money back guarantee (excluding PhoneTree Pro, Lab, MD), so you really can’t go wrong! Check them out for yourself at http://www.phonetree.com. On their site you can see more real world examples and hear sample messages.

Exchange 2007 does require a lot of resources, and people often ask me why that is. Microsoft really made a very scalable and highly flexible messaging system in Exchange 2007. The ability to handle thousands of mailboxes, unified communications and voice recognition can take a lot of resources.

Making Exchange 2007 64 BIT uses resources efficiently and allows the software to access a lot more memory. Right, Exchange 2007 will eat up a good chunk of memory.

But, don’t let it scare you, some of the functionality in Exchange 2007 as it pertains to voice is awesome. I have a system running in production for a while now and I’ve had a lot of callers ask me what voice system we have. Exchange 2007 handles voice recognition very well. I have yet to have someone say anything bad about voice recognition capability of the system.

What’s more, you can have Exchange read you your mailbox contents. All this takes lot of processing, and when it comes to voice you need to have everything in memory that you need to process (so you need lot of RAM). I say try it, you will be impressed!

There are many options available if you are in the market for a VOiP based phone system, everyone wants to sell you a new system and do a rip and replace as far as your trusted traditional phone system goes.

When you want to IP enable your current phone system, there are not many options. Replacing the entire system maybe cost prohibitive and your phone system may be old enough to where you cannot add IP adapters to it.

This is when Microsoft’s Unified Communications strategy might be able to aid in rescue. Instead of having to rip and replace your existing phone system, would you not use software to simply IP enable your voice infrastructure? Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 is designed with that in mind.

You can integrate your current phone system, with whatever type of Telco connectivity it has to OCS. You can then have your users connect to OCS and unlike regular VOiP systems, you get enhanced IM functionality with presence information embedding in office products (Outlook, Excel, Word), you get VOiP connectivity from handhelds, you get video conferencing capability and Microsoft has tweaked the audio codecs so they perform really well in low bandwidth situations.

To read up more about Microsoft’s Unified Communications strategy, you may want to visit http://www.microsoft.com/uc if you are interested in finding out more about OCS 2007, you can visit http://www.microsoft.com/ocs or reply to this article with questions.