Shoretel's CEO, John Combs, presented a keynote address recently at IT Expo West, providing pertinent advice to IT managers and business owners evaluating a voice over IP (VOIP) phone system. He cited the MAC iPhone as an reference, to explain how quickly new technology can come to the fore in an industry. With a VOIP business phone system, IP technology is poised to dominate similarly over existing analog (TDM) systems. VOIP telephone systems can significantly improve user adaption rates, leading to improved productivity in an organization.

An IP phone system allows the collaborative and reach aspects of unified messaging technology. The VOIP telephone system ordinarily includes features such as audio conferencing, unified messaging (voicemail to email), web collaboration, mobile integration (cell phones), presence (to locate employees quickly), instant messaging, video conferencing and application integration (customer relationship management, sales, accounting, etc.).

What differentiates one vendor's small business phone systems from the next? In his speech, Mr. Combs outlined a structured evaluation process when upgrading to office telephone systems using VOIP for business. He proposed 8 evaluation criteria to be used by the evaluation team making the choice of a new VOIP business phone system:

Usability. A live demonstration is mandatory including the actual hardware being proposed by the vendor. Mr Combs highly recommends having two or more vendor demonstrations side-by-side, or alternatively to install alternative prototypes at two different company offices and then exchange systems and locations to see which one was best.

Reliability. What is the anticipated failure rate, based on actual deployed systems using Bellcore/Telecordia standards? Mr Combs pointed out that academic failure rates are not sufficient for this estimate. You don't want to the the "guinea pig" for a vendor's prototype or Beta testing.

Availability. Make sure you understand the effect of downtime on the business based on the planned configuration. How many failure points exist in the vendor's configuration?

Scalability. Examine the anticipated cost should your company double in size.

Architecture. What methodology was used to design the system? Was it built ground-up vs. piecemeal from various merged business entities?

Total Cost of Ownership. In many cases initial costs (hardware, network and implementation) come to only 20% of the total system expenditure in the long term. Day-to-day costs (training, move/add/change, system management, network and utilities) can easily add up to 80% over the system lifetime. What is the case with the systems under consideration?

Vendor Financial Strength. Evaluate the vendor's balance sheet to get comfortable with the fact that they'll continue to be able to support your office telephone system.

Vendor References. Everyone on the team should contact their peers for information regarding the ip phone system vendors considered. Did they make a wise decision with this vendor? Do they know of other references? What is their actual cost experience vs. vendor estimates at the start? Is the system a support nightmare? Are there any "raving fans?"

When selecting to upgrade small business phone systems, most users prefer a VOIP business phone system. A careful evaluation of each vendor's offerings and especially the presence of "raving fans" for any VOIP business phone system are important in getting all the benefits of VOIP for business.

Jim Green owns an online telecommunications brokerage, assisting his clients in both selecting the best T1 service provider as well as recommending local providers of all the most popular VOIP and TDM small business phone systems.