The ROI of IP Telephony Management

Whether companies are just starting, continuing, or finished with the IP telephony deployments, one thing's for certain: They need to manage these newly converged networks. They must deliver voice traffic over the IP network in a way that is consistent and predictable, with sound quality on par with or better than TDM. Unlike its TDM predecessor, IP telephony is not a closed-network, single application environment using its own network resources. Rather, IP telephony is part of an overall unified-communications infrastructure, where multiple applications compete for finite network resources. As a result, IP telephony implementations require new monitoring and management tools and skills.