|
White paper for Insight Research
NETWORK CONVERGENCE FOR ENTERPRISES:
The Carrier-Centric Approach
1. Overview
When monthly communications bills run into six figures (as they
do in many large enterprises), managers become keenly aware of the
recurring expense associated with voice and data. Voice-over-IP (VoIP)
has received must attention recently with its bold claims for
reducing telecom outlays. While VoIP has proven cost saving
benefits, it also requires significant investment in new premises
equipment. Unfortunately, with today’s aggressive ROI payback
periods, enterprises are finding it difficult to justify new VoIP
technology.
Rather than invest, enterprises could instead try to lower their
operational costs by reorganizing their legacy networks, but there
are challenges here too. Unfortunately, telecom is generally
considered one of the least understood and worst managed corporate
cost centers. Rolling up expenses for voice (long distance and
local), data (Internet and WAN), and enhanced services (video, voice
conferencing, and messaging) across multiple systems spread out over
many locations and from multiple service providers is a complex and
error-prone process.
Insight’s ongoing analysis of telecommunications industry trends
suggests there is another approach to enterprise convergence—one
that is far simpler to implement and comes with measurable
bottom-line results. What is being called network or carrier-based
convergence has many of the cost saving advantages of internal or
premises-based convergence, but unlike VoIP, enterprises are spared
from making significant new capital investments. Instead enterprises
plug their existing voice and data networking devices into the
carrier’s multi-service network. Besides immediate hard cost savings
derived from lower access charges, a carrier approach strategically
positions the enterprise for more advanced network architectures.
Carriers can migrate the enterprise to an IP-based VPN (virtual
private network) for additional cost savings and get an added bang
that comes with new sophisticated service capabilities.
To understand the power of network convergence, we first examine
how enterprises use telecom carriers for their voice and data
services. |
