George Golding, managing director of Euphoria Telecom, recently offered what he sees as steps to guide those who want to adopt VoIP.

First off, Golding says, VoIP “is neither difficult to use nor to adopt. But the first step is a fairly simple one: Decide if you want to keep your old PBX (News - Alert). As Golding says your existing analogue PBX can be coupled with VoIP save on call costs, in which case “the provider will simply put in a gateway device on your premises, which will receive your analogue phone lines on one end and turn them into VoIP channels going out on your Internet line.”

Going for full cloud VoIP means the PBX is hosted by your provider, and you pay for handsets and a gateway if the old PBX is kept as backup.

Second, bear in mind that VoIP falls under the IT umbrella. As Golding says, this means your VoIP provider should work with your IT manager or support the company for installation and answering some key questions.

One of those questions is, “How many extensions do you have or want?” Remember that unlike analogue handsets, VoIP handsets are future-proof, Golding says, “and offer integration with other forms of communication, collaboration and business processes.

Again, if you’re a single-premise company, you might want to keep your analogue PBX if it is still under contract if a secondary Internet line is not available. For companies with more than one branch “it makes sense to go with VoIP for the whole installation,” Golding says, “because inter-branch calls cost nothing.”

Ask yourself how many simultaneous calls you’ll need to make per branch, since this will have an implication for the size of the Internet line to each branch. And know how many roaming staff you have that may need communications on the go.

What type of Internet access do you have at each branch? There are cost implications involved, and as Golding explains, “experienced providers will use knowledge of the line to decide on the architecture of the VoIP.

The truth about VoIP systems, Golding says, is that “they’re not different, in the main, from telephony as you know it,” but “you will benefit from enormously beneficial extra features that improve workflow and communication.”

In other industry news, wholesale VoIP company Alcazar Networks has a whole host of services it can list on its resume including wholesale origination, wholesale termination, local termination, dialer termination and toll free termination; but there is an additional service that the company wants to spread the word about – its CNAM services.

Alcazar Networks, which was founded in 2003, provides a wide range of services and targets companies looking for wholesale origination, wholesale termination, T38 fax compatibility, nationwide e911 (News - Alert), CNAM publishing and lookups, directory listings and API based configurations all from one company.