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The business case for adopting voice over internet protocol (VoIP) telephony systems grows more compelling every day.

In addition to the long distance savings, the equipment costs less, and does more. Moves, adds and changes are much easier. System monitoring is straightforward, and the usage reports are richer. And, most importantly, companies can leverage their existing IP networks to achieve an integrated voice and data platform.

Features, such as videoconferencing and unified messaging, offer tools that can transform the way a business operates.

While there are real pitfalls to watch for the momentum of VoIP seems unstoppable, say experts who have managed numerous installations.

This has been made possible by the emergence of very high speed, reliable IP networks.

As Jocelyn Philbrook, vice president of corporate marketing and investor relations at Westford, Mass- based Sonus Networks puts it, "What we've seen in the past five years is the quality assurance and high speed bandwidth that are able to support multiple types of communications-video, voice, data-very rapidly and with a high degree of quality throughout the network."

Early adopters have already worked through various telephony strategies and have started to move steadily to VoIP-based solutions with consolidated voice and data networks, reports Roberta Fox, Principal at Mount Albert, Ont-based Fox Group Consulting.

But the pace of change has been incremental. This has led to a prevalence of hybrid systems as companies slowly replace legacy TDM (time-division multiplexing) systems with IP based systems. "VoIP has become the de facto standard on net new locations, but we're not seeing people rip out legacy TDM systems and replace them with IP telephony," said Fox

"Within a single office you could have some IP phones that plug into the LAN and others that plug into the traditional TDM system. You don't have to be 100% VoIP to take advantage of some of the capabilities. That's what most companies are doing." There are different strategies a company can take, she explained.

Larger enterprises, that are comfortable owning and managing their own equipment, prefer to develop and maintain in-house telephony systems.

This was the approach taken by the Alberta Cancer Board, which runs several hospitals and clinics in the province.

Informations Systems (IS) team leader Glenn Matias explained that their network is distributed across several Alberta cities. "The ultimate goal was to run VoIP out to the remote areas. Instead of running long distance over the public phone network, we decided to run it over our WAN. "Of course, we had to beef up our WAN to do that. Plus, we had to ensure that the quality of the traffic was there. So we configured end to end QoS between our sites. Those are the requirements."

The Alberta Cancer Board partnered with Bell to develop an IP telephony system that was integrated into their existing data network. They rely on Cisco equipment to power their data and voice networks.

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