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Voice over IP
Martin Lewis explains how IT user groups can give SMEs a stronger voice
in their dealings with vendors
Many Hands Make Light Work of IT Support
Martin Lewis is MD of Beta Group and
chairman of the UK & Ireland SAP Business
One User Group. Part of the overall UK &
Ireland SAP User Group, an independent
organisation set up to serve the needs of
SAP users, the Business One User Group
represents more than 600 organisations
and 5,000 IT and business professionals in
the UK & Ireland. It provides a forum where
users can share knowledge, best practice
and expertise with their peers.
compliant or via a gateway for legacy
systems. However, Goodenough argues
that it is important to choose your phone
system and SIP trunk provider carefully.
“One of the interesting things about
SIP is that it is made up of a series of
different technical standards and everyone
views them in different ways,” he said.
“Traditional telecoms is easier: you get
ISDN30e and a PRI card and it’ll work.
But with SIP there are so many potential
pitfalls – have DDI and CLI been tested
etc. – so one of the most important things
for us is that everything is tested.”
Customers who buy a 3CX Phone
System bundled with SIP trunks from
Spitfire can be confident that all elements
will work together. Further peace of mind
comes from Spitfire’s policy only to use IP
networks that provide Quality of Service
guarantees for voice traffic. This restricts
its reach to businesses in cities and towns
but gives customers reassurance that
voice quality will be maintained.
Many businesses will continue with
ISDN lines, because of an existing
investment in telephony infrastructure;
because the business is located in an area
with inadequate broadband coverage;
or because they plan to maintain them
for back-up purposes. But for others, the
combination of Spitfire SIP trunks and a
3CX Phone System is too good to resist.
Who needs tin?
3CX launched itsWindows software-based IP
phone system in 2006. Now on version 10, it has
been downloaded by thousands of small and
medium-sized businesses and is being used by
some of the world’s largest enterprises, notably
Boeing and Formula One’s Team Lotus.
Steve Corrigan, 3CX Channel Manager for the
UK & Ireland, told
Business Info
that the product
was born out of 3CX’s own search for a telephone
system and that, having a software background, the
company’s founders quickly saw the potential of
bringing an IT mindset to the telephony market.
“We needed a telephone system that let people
collaborate and we were disappointed with what
there was in the market: 98% of businesses were
priced out of effective communications platforms,”
he said.
“If you look at traditional vendors, you see
that not a lot has changed with their systems
since the 1970s. Compare this to the IT industry,
which has gone from an infrastructure dominated
by mainframes in the 1970s to a situation today
where an SMB can buy a laptop for £200 and a
server for £300. That’s what IT does.With 3CX we
have brought IT engineering and IT principles to the
telecoms environment.”
According to Corrigan, this approach has
resulted in a phone system that is more affordable,
more highly specified out of the box and greener
than hardware-based offerings from other vendors.
“Traditional vendors have a huge cost base: in
manufacturing plants; the power needed to drive
them; raw materials; distribution and warehousing;
and getting the products to the customer on the
back of a lorry. But 3CX is purely software-based
and our delivery mechanism is the internet. This is
greener and directly impacts the acquisition cost,”
he said.
Corrigan says that further savings come from
3CX’s use of open standards, such as SIP, which
allows its phone system to be used with SIP-based
handsets from a number of suppliers – unlike tradi-
tional vendors that tie customers into a complete
end-to-end solution with excessively high handset
prices – and SIP trunks from Spitfire and others.
Another differential with traditional phone
systems is that all 3CX Phone Systems are supplied
with a full set of functions as standard, including
advanced features such as auto attendant, ring
routes, call queueing, voicemail, voice to email,
conferencing and call recording. “We don’t have any
options – everything comes as standard – whereas
on traditional phone systems you have to pay for
these as options,” explained Corrigan.
What’s more, this level of functionality is avail-
able to the smallest business at very low cost. For
example, the 3CX Mini Edition, which can handle
four simultaneous calls (enough for 10 extensions),
and provides full unified communications, costs 350
Euros, plus an annual software assurance charge
of 150 euros for updates. And because 3CX Phone
System can be scaled up to support any number of
extensions, it can grow as your business does.
IT is swiftly becoming a necessity not a luxury.
Even the smallest of the UK’s five million SMEs
must be able to store, analyse and share data in
order to survive let alone prosper.
However, technology isn’t necessarily a
silver bullet: as well as the expense of an initial
implementation, there are the ongoing costs of
management and training; the need to stay up to
date with the latest technology; and, for SMEs, the
nagging doubt that they won’t receive as much
attention and support as larger, more influential
customers.
The need to divert limited funds, time and
personnel to the problem can have a big impact on
an SME and its employees: according to the 2011
E-Skills UK survey, only 15% of IT users in SMEs
had recently received training, compared with 27%
of workers overall.
SMEs sometimes try to address these shortfalls
by hiring external consultants, but they are not
cheap and there is no guarantee that an SME will
be able to access expertise when it needs it.
Strength in Numbers
The most important thing for SMEs to remember
is that their IT concerns are unlikely to be unique
and that through user groups, such as the UK &
Ireland SAP Business One User Group, they can
pool their resources and expertise to find solutions
to problems.
For example, they could find out about
common faults and how to fix them; and if
business process consultancy is truly needed, it’s
possible that a number of SMEs with similar issues
could share the cost of engaging a third-party
consultant. Finally, by pooling resources, SMEs can
find a louder voice with which to communicate
with IT vendors.
It can be easy for SMEs to slip beneath the radar
of vendors such as SAP, but by speaking in unison,
they can become a force to be reckoned with and
even the playing field with large enterprises.
...Continued