IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide. June 2013

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2 Table of Contents Executive Summary.... p. 3 Top 10 Considerations.... p. 4 Consideration #1 - what will the IP phones be used for?... p. 4 Consideration #2 - who will be using the IP phones?... p. 5 Consideration #3 - what type of IP phones do you plan to use?... p. 5 Consideration #4 - what budget do you have in mind?... p. 6 Consideration #5 - what are your needs for voice?... p. 7 Consideration #6 - what telephony features are you looking for?... p. 7 Consideration #7 - are you looking for visual display features?... p. 8 Consideration #8 - how important is video for IP phones?... p. 9 Consideration #9 - do you need integration with mobile telephony?... p. 9 Consideration #10 - how will these phones be powered?...p.10 Conclusion.... p. 11 IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

3 Executive Summary At some point, it will be time to replace or upgrade your telephony system, and never before have there been so many options. Regardless of what you re using today, this presents an opportunity to do something different. Some businesses will elect to simply get an IP-based version of their legacy system, and basically keep the status quo. This may also apply to smaller businesses that don t have a switched system and simply want the benefits of IP phones that they cannot get with existing phones. Finally, other businesses may be comfortable with Web and cloud-based telephony solutions that do not require a switch, and instead only call for IP phones in terms of new hardware. Not only is the definition of a phone system changing with IP, but so is the meaning of telephony itself. As VoIP continues to mature, the easier it becomes to offer full-featured telephony without the need for a phone system. Given the ease of enabling voice communications via the Web as well as mobility, businesses are depending less on conventional phone systems and desk phones for everyday communication. As the hub of telephony continues to shift to the desktop, businesses are finding that IP phones can serve their needs for fixed line telecom. This guide has been prepared to help businesses navigate this path, as there is more involved than just buying inexpensive handsets. Voice is too important to be dictated by the lowest cost options, and by making smart choices with IP phones, businesses can get more value out of VoIP than they ever could with capital-intensive legacy phone systems. For guidance on making those smart choices, 10 key considerations are reviewed herein, along with how you can rethink what s possible with IP telephony. IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

4 Top 10 Considerations IP telephony is more than just bringing down the cost of voice but only if you think this way. Cost savings may be the only driver for you, but a more strategic view sees greater possibilities. Our view is that when the need arises for buy new phones, your view will be to think more broadly about the role of telephony in your business. You might find you don t need that complex phone system any more, and voice services can be enabled very effectively in other ways. Not only may the need for a phone system come into question, but the definition of what a phone is could stand a refresh as well. With that thinking in mind, here are 10 considerations that should guide your decision-making around investing in IP phones. Consideration #1: What will the IP phones be used for? This may seem like a simple question, but the range of options is much broader than the last time you probably made a decision about phones. With legacy technology, a phone was purpose built and there was little else to consider, especially since voice ran over a dedicated network. Not only was a phone just used for voice, but everyone pretty much used their phones in the same manner. Aside from voice, IP phones can support most of the modes used now to varying degrees. You could certainly get IP phones with only voice in mind, and in many cases that will suffice. However, there is nothing stopping you from viewing these as multimedia devices that can readily support video, conferencing, and some Web-based applications. Not only that, but you can get different types of IP phones to support the specific needs of groups across your business. In legacy times, everyone often got the same phones even though their use of the features varied widely. With IP phones, you have a lot more flexibility, not just for the base features, but to add or enable new features over time as needs change. Also, since these phones aren t capitalized, you never have to feel stuck if your needs change quickly. New models come out all the time, and there will always be affordable options to add new phones or upgrade the ones you may have just recently bought. This is a different world from legacy, where phone systems were long-term capital investments. They may have been very durable but had limited flexibility to evolve beyond their intended purpose. When those phones were installed, you knew you d be using them for one thing and for a long time to come. IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

5 Consideration #2: Who will be using the IP phones? This may also come across as a self-evident consideration, but the answer is likely different from your last time around. When buying a phone system, you re basically getting a one-size-fits-all solution. Every phone was hard-wired to a desk and tied an expensive, hardware-based system. Today, you don t need to buy something on this scale, and that gives you more options. Not only can IP phones take many forms, but they need not be tied to the desktop or hard-wired to a designated space. Remember, legacy phones are connected to a voice network and limited to its physical footprint. IP phones connect to the data network via an IP or SIP address, and the only requirement is access to broadband. This takes all the physical constraints of legacy out of the equation, which also means that employees can use IP phones in a broader range of scenarios. As such, you can think more broadly, not just about who can have an IP phone in your business, but also where they will be working from. Keep in mind that IP phones are relatively inexpensive, and once the network is properly configured, these phones should work out of the box. This means you can economically extend IP phones to more employees than you could have justified with legacy, and your business can support more flexible operational models. Think about what this could mean for having more employees work from home either full time or split time with the office as well as supporting a small contact center from a remote location but still connected to your LAN. Consideration #3: What type of IP phones do you plan to use? This may also seem simplistic, but is at the heart of how telephony has evolved. With legacy, there is basically one type of phone, with the main variation being how many lines the phone supports. They all have the same form factor, are wired into the same network, and are relatively expensive. With IP phones generally being less costly, there are options for everyone. More importantly, there is a broader range of types of IP phones to consider. For those who want the familiar experience, most varieties closely resemble the look and feel of a legacy desk phone. They will also be physically connected to a network, but not IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

6 hard-wired. Since they use a plug-in jack, these phones are quite mobile, and can be moved from station to station without missing a beat. This alone could meet your needs, but other variations of IP phones can make for a richer transition from legacy. Since the key driver is getting connected to the LAN via broadband, you can provide a comparable experience using a PC-based softphone or even a USB handset that plugs into your PC. You can even go cordless and use WiFi-enabled or DECT phones with extendable base stations. Wireless devices are another consideration altogether, but even with these tethered options, the range of possibilities goes well beyond legacy. The key here is to look beyond the conventional desk phone when thinking about what an IP phone can be, especially since this has an impact on not just where people can work from, but also which employees can have an IP phone. Consideration #4: What budget do you have in mind? For many, this might be the most important consideration, especially if your frame of reference is legacy. In that world, phone systems were a capital expenditure, so this would have been a major investment along with the expectation of a long use life, typically 10+ years. During the initial transition to VoIP, larger businesses needed to migrate from PBX to IP PBX, but adoption was slow for a number of reasons. One factor was the high cost of the IP phones that were part of the IP PBX system. At that time, this largely offset the economic benefits of VoIP, and if that sounds familiar, you may still think of the phones as being a high cost item. As VoIP traction developed, the cost of these phones came down, and today, most types of IP phones are affordable for businesses of all sizes. With the wide range of IP phones available, you can tailor the mix to the overall budget you can allocate. This means you should not build your budget around the average cost per phone, as this will vary by the type of phone. IP phones can be bought for well under $100, but you won t likely need to spend more than $400 for all but the most deluxe models. All IP phones will come with a core set of features, but higher end phones will support more advanced features such as HD support or conferencing, or have more ergonomic design to support power users. More importantly, your budget can be optimized to suit the broad range of needs across your operations. In other words, key IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

7 executives can get high end phones, contact center agents could get phones built for high volume use, and low end phones could be placed in common areas such the lobby or meeting rooms. Whatever your total budget, this means you can cover far more ground with IP phones than you could have done with legacy. Consideration #5: What are your needs for voice? IP phones aren t always just about voice, but this is a pretty fundamental consideration. The role of voice may not change, but like the other factors in this analysis, VoIP provides new possibilities that go beyond legacy. Whether you use legacy or IP phones or even a mix of both these endpoints are only one piece of the puzzle for addressing your voice needs. Most employees don t have special needs for voice so long as the quality is good and the service is reliable. This has more to do with your network and choice of VoIP service provider, but for everyday use, most IP phones should do the job. VoIP usually comes with some small compromises in these areas when compared to legacy telephony, but to be fair VoIP also has some upside that you may not be thinking about. Cost savings is the main driver for VoIP, and businesses accept the potential tradeoffs with quality and reliability within limits, but this also keeps expectations low. There is a long standing view in the legacy world that VoIP quality will never match TDM, but when IP networks are properly engineered, superior call quality is the result. HD voice high definition has been gaining traction, and when you hear the difference, it s not hard to understand why. Imagine how customers would react having an HD call with your agents or how attentive prospects will be on a sales call. In this regard, voice has higher value and can be a competitive differentiator. You need a robust network to do this, and SIP trunking really helps, but you also must have HD-supported IP phones. Not all IP phones have this, but if you see value here, you ll want this capability. Consideration #6: What telephony features are you looking for? This is largely a function of budget, so you need to have a good idea of both must-have and nice-to-have features. Chances are you ll want to at least be on par with your current phones, but you could just as likely be on both ends of that IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

8 spectrum. In other words, you may have a full-featured legacy phone system that needs replacing. Most businesses only use a fraction of the features hard-wired to those systems, so you may not even know what s possible today. Conversely, you may be coming from a more scaled-down scenario with perhaps KTS Key Telecom System or standalone phones, in which case you have minimal features or ability to upgrade. Whatever your frame of reference, keep in mind that IP phones have more flexibility than legacy phones when it comes to features. On a physical level, all phones have the same basic keypad, and there are some baked-in features you need to consider, such as speaker phone, headphone jack or the visual display interface. Beyond these, telephony features are mostly software-based and provided by the VoIP operator. Many are free and can be self-provisioned as needed, but if you have a particular set of needs in mind such as how many parties you can conference into a call you should be sure your phones can support them. Consideration #7: Are you looking for visual display features? This consideration starts to broaden the IP phone discussion beyond its primary use for telephony. As noted earlier, sometimes a phone is just a phone, and for many or most that will be enough. However, as with anything based on IP, much more is possible. IP phones typically come with some form of a visual display, but the range can be quite extensive. The most basic display supports telephony with standard text-based information caller ID, time, date, length of call, etc. These are usually 1 or 2 lines of text with low resolution, and may be programmable by the end user rather than centralized by IT. Things get more interesting when going beyond VoIP, and there is a wide range phones with advanced visual capabilities. Sticking with text, there are rich environments with bigger displays, higher resolutions and even color to support not just telephony-based information. Since VoIP runs over the data network, these phones can support Web-based applications, where you could access real-time information or content relevant to the call. Moving up a level, some models also support video with an embedded camera. The quality can be highly variable, but depending on how important this is for your desk phone, video can be a central feature. You may not need any of this, but the important IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

9 thing is to think of IP phones as supporting more than just telephony. This becomes even more relevant when looking at the latest high-end phones that have touch screens. At that point, an IP phone functions more closely to a tablet or smart phone than a desk phone, adding another layer of complexity for this decision. Consideration #8: How important is video for IP phones? This builds on the previous consideration, but video needs additional analysis. The business case for video is still evolving, but as the cost keeps dropping and the technologies keep improving, the obstacles become easier to overcome. If you see the value of video for your business, then IP phones should be in your thinking. You may only need this for a select group of employees, and you can easily just get videoenabled phones for them. In this case, you ll also need to ensure your network can support video as well choosing the right deployment model for the service. On a technology level, this takes us into the protocol space where the standards supported by the IP phone vendor need to align with your network. A key factor is the H.264 codec, especially the latest extension, SVC scalable video coding. IP phones aren t the ideal environment for video, but by using current standards, you can get passable results at a manageable cost. Keep in mind that a business-driven plan for adopting video would have many elements, as you must decide who will be using it and what the purposes will be. Video chat is a basic application that IP phones can support nicely, but when you move into customer-facing situations or larger groups for conferencing, IP phones should play a limited role. Consideration #9: Do you need integration with mobile telephony? Just as video needs specific consideration, so will mobility. There are two elements to mobility, and each will impact your plans around IP phones. First, you need to look at mobility as a trend unto itself. All businesses are trying to manage the onslaught of smartphones and the new demands of BYOD, and it s clear that these are becoming the devices of choice. IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

10 If you re seeing a noticeable drop-off in usage of desk phones with no end in sight, you may choose to go with the flow. In this case, you ll likely opt for basic IP phones, which may actually accelerate the shift to mobility if that s where employees get the best results. In fact, it s possible you may want to lay the groundwork to phase out desk phones altogether and rely totally on mobility. Conversely, however, you may still see value in desk phones and want them to remain a key part of everyday communications. This would lead you to go in the other direction and invest in better IP phones that complement what employees are doing with mobility. In that case, your IP phones will need to support FMC fixed mobile convergence. This requires more than just buying the right type of phones, but the benefits can be very real. FMC is great way to curb mobility costs by driving wireless traffic over your network or WiFi, as well as boosting productivity by enabling call continuity when end users shift from a fixed location to a mobile environment. Aside from getting features that make the handoff to mobile devices effective, your IP phones should SIP. Not all models are SIP-enabled, but you ll want this if FMC is in your plans. Consideration #10: How will these phones be powered? This is a practical consideration, but will impact your choice of IP phone. The main factor is whether you are currently or planning to use PoE Power over Ethernet. If so, the phones must support PoE, in which case both power and connectivity flow over the same cable. This provides the best throughput, and is certainly better than USB, which is limited in its ability to support peripherals to enable telephony as well as video, and can only transmit power effectively over very short distances. Conversely, your IP phones can be AC powered, which means separate connections for data and power. This will be more common in lower end models as well as cordless phones, and can be perfectly serviceable for basic telephony needs. The only caveat is the need for each phone to have access to a power outlet, either wall-mounted or running off a power bar. IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved

11 Conclusion IP phones are not as costly or complex as a full scale phone system, but they still require careful planning. Where the needs are very basic almost any model of IP phone will suffice, and you could even source these from your local electronics superstore or from a Web-based distributor. Our readers require more, however, and that s who this guide has been written for. The main theme is that IP telephony is different than TDM, especially in terms of how it interacts with other communications modes. As such, you need to think about more than telephony and the changing needs of how employees use the various tools at their disposal. Each consideration in this guide is distinct, and others could also be discussed, but these 10 provide a broad base to understand the range of issues you will likely need to deal with. Overall, our intention is to present a range of considerations that include voice but also go well beyond what you have long been using desk phones for. Whether your intent is to replicate legacy telephony at a lower cost or to build on IP telephony to transform your business, you need to be thinking of things to make the right decision. About Ziff Davis Ziff Davis, Inc. is a leading digital media company specializing in the technology market, reaching over 40 million highly engaged in-market buyers and influencers every month. Ziff Davis sites, which feature trusted and comprehensive evaluations of the newest, hottest products, and the most advanced ad targeting platform. Ziff Davis B2B is a leading provider of online research to enterprise buyers and high-quality leads to IT vendors. More information on Ziff Davis can be found at ziffdavis.com. IP Phone: Top 10 Considerations Buyer s Guide Ziff Davis Research All Rights Reserved