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Your IT services provider in Houston should know enough about VoIP, which uses the internet for phone service, to answer your questions about integrating it with your infrastructure. Those on the cutting edge of technology agree that VoIP is an increasing necessity. Here are reasons why you should be aware of this increasingly popular choice for business communication.
Why Businesses Turn To VoIP
The main reason VoIP has become widespread for business is that it cuts costs, especially for long distance calls. It allows a global enterprise to do high volume work at a lower cost compared to what traditional telephone service costs. VoIP also integrates well with other electronic communications, such as email. All your messages through various platforms can be accessed in one place. VoIP provides convenient features such as call forwarding, in which you can choose where to reroute calls. This feature allows employees to keep using mobile devices if there’s a local disaster.
Technology Needed for VoIP
The ideal VoIP system has separate ISPs for voice and your main business network. They can be programmed as backups for the other in case one of the networks goes down. Here are key VoIP requirements:
- Separate virtual local area network (VLAN) for phone
- Quality of Service (QoS) needs to be enabled and configured
- Edge routers that connect remote offices require proper QoS settings
- VoIP packets should be marked by IP phones and voice gateways
- Wireless networks should have a dedicated VLAN
- Analytics for LAN/WAN to evaluate packet loss or delay jitter
Before choosing VoIP for communications, you should find out if your existing infrastructure will support it. Once you install VoIP, your IT services team in Houston needs to test the system to make sure that it works properly.
Business Continuity Planning
Many companies rely on high-volume phone calls for revenue. It’s important to know that you need a backup plan in case there’s ever a problem with VoIP. One way to ensure VoIP runs more smoothly is to invest in monitoring services and disaster recovery solutions. Monitoring services can give you constant status reports on your system condition.
It’s best to be well prepared for any situation that can disrupt your business. Make sure you are clear about your provider’s service agreement. Find out if you get guarantees on security and availability. You need to know where your system is hosted and how the provider handles disasters. Most modern data centers use automatic backup generators.
Administrators need to set policies as to what type of networks in which employees with mobile phones are allowed to connect. You will be able to set rules such as not connecting with public WiFi networks due to privacy concerns. In order to make sure your overall VoIP continuity plan works, you need to test it on a regular basis.
Ally with an IT services provider in Houston to help you know more about VoIP. Contact us at ICS to experience how VoIP can enhance your business communication and provide long-term savings.
Further reading
ICS is a Texas-based 40-year-old technology company specializing in Managed IT, VoIP, Video Conferencing and Video Surveillance solutions for US and International businesses. ICS has over 4000 regional installations and specializes in multi-site businesses between 25 and 2500 employees. ICS’s customers enjoy the experience of ICS’s Total Care program which provides clients flat fee services with obsolescence and growth protection. Whether a customer elects to deploy their IT, Video Conferencing or VoIP in the cloud or on the customer’s premise, ICS can provide a full turn-key solution for our clients under one flat monthly fee.