In one of a series of scheduled keynotes by telecom industry luminaries here at ITEXPO East in Miami, Les Goldman, Senior Product Manager for Managed Network Services for Verizon (News - Alert) Business, gave an interesting presentation on Wednesday on the complexities of VoIP and how such things as managed services can help.

Goldman began: “At TMC’s previous ITEXPO (News - Alert) in Los Angeles, customers came up to me and kept talking to me about issues regarding VoIP. One person said, ‘When there’s an emergency and I need a policeman, I call 911. But when I have a VoIP problem, I don’t know who to call. It’s a complex situation.’ Just as websites are more than electronics billboards, and mobile communications are more than car phones, IP telephony is more than IP dial tone. Further complexity appears with Unified Communications (News - Alert), which requires new approaches in terms of defining the application, design implications, and ongoing management options.”

“Mobile users are showing us where the industry is going,” said Goldman. “Typical network problem solving no longer applies. Troubleshooting now goes beyond typical network issues. There are all kinds of hardware, network and application/configuration issues. Problems can be solved but it takes the use of significant time and specialized tools. There are all sorts of QoS and call quality issues, since customers are now dealing with mobile phones, softphones, integrated applications, and so forth. When a call is dropped, the result is often frustrating rounds of finger pointing.”

Goldman quoted a Nemertes Research report: “Often [companies] install the VoIP system with the full intention of managing it themselves. But after doing so for about 12 to 24 months, they decide to rely upon a third party to manage the infrastructure.”

After explaining the advantages of hosted services, Goldman told how “VoIP providers have expended a great deal of effort to ensure that VoIP calls are delivered to their customers. They have built reliable networks and systems. However, there’s an issue that keeps coming up with customers. They ask, ‘How do I ensure that my premise is connected to the providers so I can take advantage of everything that they’re doing?’ And for those customers who are going to manage their own solutions in-house, they’re going to have to work with the hosted VoIP provider, and work with the broadband network provider, and they’re going to have to maintain their own equipment at their premises. So customers have to deal with all of these different components and providers.”

Goldman continues with, “Some customers also say, ‘I don’t know if I’m ready to give up control of my environment to hosted services. I like the idea of not having to be the middleman for everything that goes wrong, but I don’t know if I want to give my control away.’ From my perspective, I can sell you a connection, I can sell you a VoIP service, and you’re more than welcome to purchase customer premise equipment from me and go ahead and provision it. On the other hand, there may be folks who say, ‘I still want to maintain control over my router and environment. I can still work with my users better than any other help desk right now. I know my business and I know what these people need, and I know how they use the applications. But I still need help to ensure that the premise is going to stay connected to the service provider that I’m going to use.’ For those people, we say, fine, there’s a hosted VoIP provider that you can contract with, whether it’s us or somebody else, and at the same time we’ll sell you a pipe, such as a dedicated access pipe, or whatever is necessary to keep the premises connected. So we can take some of the pressure off of customers so that they can focus on their businesses.”

“When a user is added in a managed services environment, we have to be able to understand what we change for the user,” said Goldman. “We have to understand what the impact of that user is going to be and what impact that user could potentially have on other people. Does it change the quality of service in the network? All these types of things from a managed services perspective are considered as part of the life cycle of managed services - the planning, the design, the operation and optimization.”

“There are some things that are best left outsourced and properly managed,” said Goldman. “It’s up to the customer to determine how much control he wants to relinquish. But he can always ask for help in determining this.”

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INTERNET TELEPHONY Conference & EXPO East 2008 (ITEXPO) is going on now in sunny Miami, Florida! For the latest show news, please visit Rich Tehrani’s blog.

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Today’s featured White Paper (News - Alert) is titled VoIP Doesn’t Require Any Phone Equipment Investment, brought to you by Accessline.