What to ask, what to calculate before you move to VoIP
By , Tech Update
March 24, 2004

Office locations

  • How many offices do you have?
  • How is the work force distributed?
  • How many remote users?
  • Do all employees need same VoIP applications?
Infrastructure
  • How old is the current voice network?
  • Who is your current vendor?
  • Do you want a single vendor or "best of breed?"
Data Network
  • What is the state of your data network?
  • Is it convergence ready?
Voice mail/e-mail boxes
  • How many voice mail/e-mail users do you have?
  • Do you plan to consolidate voice mail and e-mail?
Conferencing & collaboration
  • What conferencing applications do you use now?
  • How much do you spend per month on conferencing?
  • Is it worth it to bring conferencing in-house?
  • What collaborative features should be integrated?
Quality of service
  • What level of voice quality and performance is acceptable?
  • What level of reliabilty and uptime is required?
  • What level of security is needed?
  • How much support staff is required for successful rollout?
Budget
  • How much do you spend on existing system?
  • Are you budgeting for a VoIP system?
  • Are you budgeting for scalability?
  • Have you done an ROI analysis?