5. Realizing ROI with Audio Conferencing
It is common for many large organizations to
spend millions of dollars a year on audio conferencing from a
third-party provider. When deploying a UC solution that includes audio
conferencing functionality, these organizations tend to see a
significant cost savings. This cost savings is typically the largest UC
ROI factor for businesses.
When deploying a UC
solution like Lync, organizations can bring all of their audio
conferencing to the internal UC system. Previously, organizations would
pay per-minute audio conferencing charges for services that provided a
dial-in conferencing bridge and audio conferencing. When this is
brought in-house, those costs are reduced. The costs for audio
conferencing are replaced by the costs to maintain the UC system and
the inbound PSTN trunks for dial-in conferencing users. Many
organizations are leveraging SIP Trunking for this functionality to
even greater reduce costs. On average, organizations will reduce their
dial-in conferencing usage by 85%. That 85% reduction accounts for
users who are now leveraging a UC client to join a conference using IP
Audio. The remaining 15% accounts for users who are still dialing in to
the audio conference through the PSTN.
When the RIO of a UC solution is
being evaluated, it is important to not completely remove audio
conferencing costs from the total cost of ownership (TCO). A small
portion of the costs that are removed are replaced by new costs. This
can include PSTN trunks, PSTN gateways, bandwidth, and additional
server hardware if needed. Additionally, many organizations require the
use of a third-party audio bridge for advanced conferencing scenarios.
This functionality is often referred to as managed conferencing. These
scenarios include operator-assisted meetings, or very large audio
conferences with more than 1,000 participants.
6. Realizing ROI with Centralized Telephony
As mentioned in earlier sections,
most organizations have a distributed PBX system. When an organization
is considering UC, one option is to replace the distributed PBX systems
with a centralized UC Telephony platform. The centralization of the
telephony platform can have many benefits.
7. Reduced Hardware Footprint
When an organization chooses to
centralize its telephony platform, the hardware footprint is greatly
reduced. This can provide ROI by reducing hardware purchase costs,
hardware maintenance costs, and facility run costs.
8. Reduced Support Costs
Often when organizations move to a
centralized telephony environment, the costs to support the environment
are much smaller than the costs of a distributed system. UC telephony
systems, although they are modern IP-based systems, are much less
complex to manage than legacy systems. If support of the legacy
telephony solution was outsourced before, the outsourcing contract
might be reduced. If this was completely supported by internal staff,
staffing can often be reduced, or allocated to other tasks.
9. SIP Trunking Opportunity
SIP Trunking is a relatively new trend in
telephony. It is the capability to purchase PSTN services and have them
delivered over IP connections rather than traditional T1/E1 PRI
connections. Although SIP Trunking does not require a centralized
deployment model, a centralized telephony deployment does introduce the
opportunity to deploy SIP Trunking more easily. The combination of
centralized telephony and SIP Trunking is ideal for realizing cost
savings in PSTN Trunking.
Many organizations have a
vast number of PRI connections delivering PSTN services. The problem
with PRIs is that they come in only one size (23 voice channels per
trunk in the U.S.). SIP Trunking allows organizations to have more
control over how many channels are purchased. In simple terms, if you
were a mid-size organization that needed 25 voice channels to support
your call load, this would result in two PRIs. Those two PRIs would
require two T1 connections. The end result is double the cost for a
very small capacity increase.
These are the two ways in which SIP Trunking allows you to reduce your PSTN costs:
• Reduction in the Number of Voice Channels—Organizations
that deploy SIP Trunking typically see a 40% reduction in the number of
actual voice channels, because the capacity is much easier to predict
and control. This reduction in voice channels also comes with a
cheaper, more flexible delivery method: IP. Many times this is
delivered through an MPLS connection from the provider directly to the
organization’s data center, but there are services that target small to
mid-market customers that will also deliver these services over the
Internet.
• Shared Usage—Organizations
can reduce their voice channels even more in a centralized telephony
model. When the PSTN trunks are centralized, they can be shared across
all of your sites. This works very well in organizations spread across
multiple time zones. In fact, SIP Trunking services can be tweaked
based on time zones to provide capacity where it is needed, resulting
in a large amount of cost savings.
• Flexibility—SIP
Trunking introduces the ability to increase or decrease capacity as
needs change. TDM connections would often require additional physical
line configurations to accommodate capacity changes. With SIP Trunking,
this simply becomes a matter of provisioning by the provider in many
cases. SIP Trunking providers are also able to offer advanced
functionality including failover routing, and multiple area codes and
international numbers on the same connection, something that TDM trunks
are simply not able to do.
The areas previously described are
the most common areas in which organizations can realize cost savings
and ROI from deploying a UC Telephony Solution. The level at which ROI
is realized will depend on how willing the organization is to adopt the
centralized and shared model for the telephony infrastructure.
