[*] Comments about VoIP presentation at CIPS

Wed May 18 10:03:48 CDT 2005

I was rather taken a-back from the direction the presentation was going.  It was unfortunate that the presenters did slant their presentation with a certain degree of FUD -- let's face it, I'd think that there is probably a large percentage of people at the meeting that do not realize nor understand the issues surrounding this technology. (that may have something to do with the make-up of the audience to some degree).
As well, after the meeting, Bill did point out to me the difference between what a company (such as mts for example) would be pushing vs what a new(er) startup would have to offer .. competing uses/technologies .. internal vs external connectivity.  I for one was a little confused as to the direction the presentation was going and what the differences were at first.
The small motorola video presentation at the end is not all that far in the future -- and much of what was discussed is already available today and in use.
Unfortunately, the presentation was slanted towards a specific usage within a specific type of clientelle with a certain degree of "soft-costs" points.
One of the good points that was made at the presentation, is that the perceived benefit of integration and presence management is now seen as a corporate benefit -- it'll be part and parcel with any VoI or VoIP solution.

*sigh*

Dan.

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I am sorry I missed this presentation. It sounds like some good
discussion could come out of it. It also sounds like it may be time for
some of the enlightened folks to put on another informational session on
VOIP and Asterisk to some of the business community.

Jay

On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 07:45 -0500, Sean A. Walberg wrote:

> What kind of companies were they using as examples?  We recently finished 
> an RFI and RFP for our company (~1200 sets, 10 locations, 500 agent call 
> centre) and VoIP was a given.  Even upgrading a legacy Avaya platform 
> required using new processors, which are essentially Linux boxes.
> 
> >From our experience, significant (hard) cost savings were found in
> 
> - self management
> - reduced communications costs (being able to use our data pipes for voice 
> rather than separate lines)
> - reduced hardware costs by using routers as voice gateways instead of 
> dedicated gateways
> - ongoing costs (software, hardware, and maintenance)
> - MACs
> 
> Soft costs were found in
> - faster access to newer call centre features
> - responsiveness to requests (ie a managed service takes days to implement 
> a change, under self managed we can do it immediately)
> - raised floor space
> - other call centre stuff, like web and fax integration
> - support for virtual (home based) workers and agents
> - better network (one network to manage instead of two)
> 
> Some systems allowed for traditional hard sets and an IP backbone between 
> sites.  An IP set was usually the same or slightly cheaper than the 
> traditional hard set.  We could also justify the cost of LAN upgrades 
> because of the reduced capital costs above, and some of the soft costs.
> 
> Sean
> 
> On Wed, 18 May 2005, John Lange wrote:
> 
> > Bill is being much more diplomatic than I was after seeing the
> > presentation.
> > 
> > The slide that got me most riled up is where they compared the worst
> > possible case for VoIP implementation with the best possible case for IP
> > Centrex and concluded (unsurprisingly) that there is no business case
> > for using VoIP in place of MTS Centrex.
> > 
> > Having firmly dismissed the "business case" for VoIP, they then went on
> > to tell us that in fact there really *IS* a business case for VoIP as
> > long as you buy the proprietary collaboration software from Nortel
> > (which happens to use IP as a transport) but really has nothing to do
> > with VoIP and certainly nothing to do with VoInternt.
> > 
> > The funny thing is, from what I could see of the slide (which was tiny
> > and 100 miles away) was their final "business case" used 100% soft
> > numbers to justify the solution. Things like "hours saved playing phone
> > tag" and "real estate costs saved from having employees work at home"
> > and all sorts of other numbers that didn't add up to much of a hard
> > bottom line.
> > 
> > 
> 

Jay McDonald
ForeCast Technology Inc.
jay at forecasttech.com
www.forecasttech.com
PH: 204-782-2730
FX: 204-480-4800
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I am sorry I missed this presentation. It sounds like some good discussion could come out of it. It also sounds like it may be time for some of the enlightened folks to put on another informational session on VOIP and Asterisk to some of the business community. 
 
Jay 
 
On Wed, 2005-05-18 at 07:45 -0500, Sean A. Walberg wrote:
<BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE>
<PRE>
What kind of companies were they using as examples? We recently finished 
an RFI and RFP for our company (~1200 sets, 10 locations, 500 agent call 
centre) and VoIP was a given. Even upgrading a legacy Avaya platform 
required using new processors, which are essentially Linux boxes.

<FONT COLOR="#000000">&gt;From our experience, significant (hard) cost savings were found in</FONT>

<FONT COLOR="#000000">- self management</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- reduced communications costs (being able to use our data pipes for voice </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">rather than separate lines)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- reduced hardware costs by using routers as voice gateways instead of </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">dedicated gateways</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- ongoing costs (software, hardware, and maintenance)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- MACs</FONT>

<FONT COLOR="#000000">Soft costs were found in</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- faster access to newer call centre features</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- responsiveness to requests (ie a managed service takes days to implement </FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">a change, under self managed we can do it immediately)</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- raised floor space</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- other call centre stuff, like web and fax integration</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- support for virtual (home based) workers and agents</FONT>
<FONT COLOR="#000000">- better network (one network to manage instead of two)</FONT>

Some systems allowed for traditional hard sets and an IP backbone between 
sites. An IP set was usually the same or slightly cheaper than the 
traditional hard set. We could also justify the cost of LAN upgrades 
because of the reduced capital costs above, and some of the soft costs.

<FONT COLOR="#000000">Sean</FONT>

<FONT COLOR="#000000">On Wed, 18 May 2005, John Lange wrote:</FONT>

&gt; Bill is being much more diplomatic than I was after seeing the
&gt; presentation.
&gt; 
&gt; The slide that got me most riled up is where they compared the worst
&gt; possible case for VoIP implementation with the best possible case for IP
&gt; Centrex and concluded (unsurprisingly) that there is no business case
&gt; for using VoIP in place of MTS Centrex.
&gt; 
&gt; Having firmly dismissed the &quot;business case&quot; for VoIP, they then went on
&gt; to tell us that in fact there really *IS* a business case for VoIP as
&gt; long as you buy the proprietary collaboration software from Nortel
&gt; (which happens to use IP as a transport) but really has nothing to do
&gt; with VoIP and certainly nothing to do with VoInternt.
&gt; 
&gt; The funny thing is, from what I could see of the slide (which was tiny
&gt; and 100 miles away) was their final &quot;business case&quot; used 100% soft
&gt; numbers to justify the solution. Things like &quot;hours saved playing phone
&gt; tag&quot; and &quot;real estate costs saved from having employees work at home&quot;
&gt; and all sorts of other numbers that didn't add up to much of a hard
&gt; bottom line.
&gt; 
&gt;

</PRE>
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<IMG SRC="cid:1116424484.5574.10.camel at jaylinux.forecasttech.com" ALIGN="bottom" BORDER="0"><BR>
Jay McDonald<BR>
ForeCast Technology Inc.<BR>
jay at forecasttech.com<BR>
www.forecasttech.com<BR>
PH: 204-782-2730<BR>
FX: 204-480-4800<BR>
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