itand ip telephony: don’t just manage complexity; it’s time to beat it

w h i t e p a p e r

IT—and IP Telephony: Don’t just manage complexity; it’s time to beat it

57% of respondents consider

having a strategy to replace legacy solutions

with multiple less complex solutions to be the best

way to defeat IT complexity.

Your IT environment is complex enough. Although your experience with most vendors may lead you to believe that there’s no avoiding complexity, it doesn’t have to be that way—at least not when it comes to your IP telephony infrastructure.

ExEcuTIvE Summary

Many it leaders accept the idea that complexity in their infrastructures is inevitable and that trying to do a better job of managing it is their only recourse.

why? So much of their experience makes them think complexity is a fact of their lives—everything from hard-to-decipher software licensing schemes to difficult-to-accomplish integrations with other applications and workflows, to a ceaseless flow of security vulnerabilities due to product bloat.

it’s easy to understand that they may be hesitant to add to that complexity, even as they know they must continually advance business capabilities—

What factors do you believe are contributing most actively to business technology complexity today?

Needing to support an increasingly diverse set of technologies 55%

Lack of standards across technologies 47%

Conflicting proprietary technologies 44%

Difficulty integrating legacy technology 43%

Vendors not making enough effort to simplify their solutions 36%

Vendors leveraging complexity to create codependency with customers 35%

Needing to keep pace with end user expectations 34%

Vendors using complexity to generate revenue from service and support 32%

Vendors protecting their complex legacy technologies or acquisitions 32%

Lacking the appropriate internal technology skill sets/knowledge 31%

inherent complexity of technology 30%

Vendors focusing too narrowly on their solutions to win market share 28%

source: iDG research; base: 324 respondents

ThE BIg c: complExITy crEEpS ThroughouT InfraSTrucTurECertainly, many organizational factors contribute to it complexity. although ip telephony isn’t always a chief offender, its relationships to other critical busi-ness communications and collaboration issues—as well as the beginning of the next expected Voip upgrade cycle—mean that it has greater resonance than meets the eye.

More than half of the respondents said addressing security and compliance is a leading contributor, for example, followed closely by aligning technology solutions with business objectives and addressing users’ expectations. Such problems speak, at one level, to frustration with some vendors’ products. Further, they reflect the difficulties it organizations experience in trying to cope with the general push and pull of external requirements— such as complying with customer data protection regulations—and business units’ internal demands to deliver new applications and processes that enhance productivity and revenue.

against that backdrop, the fact that only one-fifth of the respondents stated that implementing unified communica-

tions is a big contributor to overall it complexity and that just 12 percent see moving to an ip telephony model in a similar light implies relatively minor concern. Yet we’ll see how ip telephony, although not perceived as a main complexity culprit, can still drive overall it complexity. For example, nearly 40 percent see trying to integrate current tools for communications and collabora-tion into business processes as adding to overall complexity.

that unified communications and ip telephony still resonate as distinct issues has significance too: it shows awareness that the population it serves does not tolerate disruptions in communications services. it professionals, then, are not sanguine about their next steps into packet-switched communications connections. they are contending, after all, with the fact that the guaranteed “dial-tone service” of the public switched telephone network (pStN) has become code for “it infrastructures that work.” how ironic it would be if complexity were to hinder ip telephony efforts.

complExITy runS In cyclESthe survey’s finding that ip telephony per se is a relatively minor contributor

white paper | it—aND ip teLephoNY: DoN’t juSt MaNaGe CoMpLexitY; it’S tiMe to beat it

including accelerating collaboration functionality with new ip telephony deployments. although unified communications might not rank at the top of it professionals’ lists of complexity culprits, it can’t afford fallout from introducing operational or management strains into critical communications infrastructures. that’s especially to be avoided in it environments that are increasingly reaching outward to run applications in the cloud, to which business communications services must connect.

Yet the truth is that many it—and ip telephony—vendors continue to benefit from fostering complexity: they draw much of their revenue from helping customers manage it, and it leaders know it. a new iDG research survey of 324 it leaders and line-of-business executives, “Navigating it Complexity,” reveals that two-thirds of the respondents don’t think technology is in itself inherently complex.

rather, it’s the circumstances of its implementation in specific solutions that often are to blame: as one survey respondent complained, the biggest contributors to it complexity are architectural, both technical and design-related.

Frankly, it leaders are growing tired of providers’ neither acknowledging their role in creating complexity nor devoting resources to efforts to simplify their products. Such vendor-induced complexity stands in the way of maximizing it investments, and that’s a price no one can afford. as resigned as it professionals may be to having to deal with the consequences of complexity, they also seem intent on minimizing it whenever they can. the good news is that in a few areas, ip telephony among them, those opportunities do exist.

6 out of 10 respondents claim that IT complexity poses an extreme or significant

challenge to their organizations.

any kind of technology investment, as is the case for some 60 percent of companies. and for ip telephony systems, much of the roi depends on the ability to seamlessly flow information across resources and applications, on-premises or in the cloud, to speed access to customer records, resolve issues during calls or track service time and billing for client phone calls in progress.

Yet nearly 40 percent of the respondents reported that integrating tools for communications and collaboration into business processes is a major contributor to it complexity. So it’s little wonder that integrating ip telephony into business processes is a challenge that more than one-third of the respondents have experienced or expected.

Complexity in the communications infrastructure can also manifest itself in another arena that affects the overall business infrastructure: managing remote and mobile users, cited by one-third of the respondents as an it organizational source of complexity. that category is broad, but an important aspect is it’s facilitation of fixed/mobile convergence. after all, smartphones are becoming ubiquitous, raising the stakes for ip telephony efforts to seamlessly hand off calls between cellular and wi-Fi networks and support a plethora of smartphone operating systems for employees’ preferred devices. (the spread of smartphones—whether corporate-issued or employee-owned—for business purposes was surely on the minds of the more than 40 percent of the respondents who pointed out that user expectations and demands are organi-zational contributors to it complexity.) Many ip telephony providers have yet to tackle tight integration of smartphones with business pbx systems in a vendor-agnostic style.

complExITy: a STEalTh paTh To vEndor lock-Ininnovations in communications, from the dawn of ip telephony to the rise of smartphones, clearly bring benefits as well as challenges, some of them natural consequences of the evolution—and some of them given a nudge by those looking to profit from them. this can lead

to overall complexity may also reflect that it typically deals with such issues on a cyclical basis, such as when it’s time to replace legacy and proprietary pbx technologies at end of life. but the next cycle starts soon, and it will be defined by Voip implementations: although Voip had penetrated only 42 percent of u.S. businesses at the end of 2009, it should reach 79 percent by 2013, according to in-Stat. infonetics research reports that the ip contact center and unified communications markets will have sales surpassing $1 billion by 2012 and 2013, respectively. as it leaders investigate their Voip options, they will be looking for solutions that make the deployment and ongoing usage and management experi-ence as seamless as possible.

unfortunately, they’re not entirely hopeful that they’re going to find what they seek as they come closer to their own upgrade cycles. once the proposi-tion becomes real, complexity concerns manifest themselves in a big way. More than 40 percent of the respondents, for instance, expect they’ll need vendor assistance to implement an ip telephony solution or have needed it in the past. with as much it complexity as they already confront—more than half of the respondents said it represents a signifi-cant or extreme challenge—that’s not a promising start. and the picture they see doesn’t necessarily get much brighter from there: an overwhelming majority of the respondents said they perceive today’s ip telephony solutions as being at least somewhat complex, with almost a third regarding them as extremely or very complex, which has post deploy-ment operations implications. More than a third said they were ready to ante up for expensive service and support options to carry them through or have done so in the past: good news for providers whose strategies are tied to increased service and support revenue but not so good for their customers.

complExITy vErSuS SEamlESSnESSComplex ip telephony deployments can really hurt the overall infrastructure where it—and the business—most need them to succeed. both groups suffer when complexity undermines maximizing

white paper | it—aND ip teLephoNY: DoN’t juSt MaNaGe CoMpLexitY; it’S tiMe to beat it 3

30% see Ip telephony as

extremely or significantly complex to maintain

and manage.

a further

56% see Ip telephony as somewhat complex.

only

2% see Ip telephony as not

at all complex.

to problems for customers that want to benefit from advances but, depending on how vendors implement these capa-bilities, wind up facing higher costs, forfeiting access to external options and dealing with increasingly byzantine systems as a result.

one survey respondent sadly summed up the dilemma many it pros face: they look forward to innovations that should alleviate issues—which should enable them to push the envelope in terms of where they can take the business. but the products so often born of those innovations ultimately only generate greater complexity.

why does it leadership often view complexity, wherever it turns up, as a vendor-created—or at least vendor-abetted—problem? on the surface, it’s about issues such as vendors’ pushing ahead with their own proprietary tech-nology, often in the guise of having to meet users’ pressing demands for new capabilities far sooner than the standards committees would allow. increasingly, it leaders suspect that those choices may be less about

bringing cutting-edge capabilities than they are about forcing lock-in.

after all, when a unified communica-tions vendor doesn’t have a commit-ment to open standards and an open ecosystem, for example, its customers don’t have much choice about where to turn for hardware or other accompani-ments to an ip telephony platform. So they frequently have to pay more for innovative, productivity-enhancing tech-nologies, from advanced Voip gateways to sophisticated switching and routing network infrastructures.

ThE coSTS of vEndor lock-Inonce locked in, users find they’re paying a lot more than a higher up-front price for a product. they’re also adding complexity to their infrastructures, in many forms. Not only do buyers have to support an increasingly diverse set of technologies and deal with the lack of standards across them and conflicting proprietary technologies—the survey respondents’ topmost active culprits in business technology complexity—but they have additionally given the vendors the power to leverage the complexity. these closed systems lock them into a codependent relationship. More than a third of the respondents see a locked-in relationship in itself as an active contrib-utor to business technology complexity.

it’s not surprising that 35 percent recog-nize that vendors across the technology spectrum aren’t making a sufficient effort to simplify their solutions. why would they, when they can use that built-in complexity to generate revenue from services and support (a cause of busi-ness technology complexity identified by 32 percent of the respondents) and win market share with a very narrow focus on their own solutions (according to 28 percent of the survey takers)?

in the ip telephony arena, intentional complexity will surely take its toll in many areas, including roi. about a third of the respondents said they expected to see or have seen that it is hard for users to take full advantage of such solutions—unsurprising, given that a quarter of them complained about a lengthy user learning curve. it’s clear that until users are fully familiar


60% of respondents claim vendors are not doing enough to reduce Ip

telephony complexity, and 58% claim that vendors

are driven by other interests preventing them from reducing complexity.

In your organization, which areas of IT are the biggest contributors to IT complexity?

addressing it security and compliance 51%

aligning technology solutions with business objectives 47%

addressing the expectations and demands of users 41%

integrating information into business processes 39%

integrating communications/collaboration tools into business processes 37%

integration of technology in general 36%

Managing remote and mobile users 35%

implementing unified communications successfully 19%

ongoing networking-related issues 17%

Moving to an ip telephony model 12%



with the ins and outs of particularly complex ip telephony solutions, they won’t be able to completely leverage unified communications—not on desktop phones and certainly not on smartphones. however, it’s not just end users who have to get over that hump. among the respondents, 32 percent said the learning curve for administrators is also steep.

forEWarnEd IS forEarmEd: complExITy IS avoIdaBlEit leaders have legitimate concerns about complexity that impedes administration, raises costs (due to factors such as labor-intensive integrations) and limits the usefulness of ip telephony and unified communications solutions. everything from mashed-up combinations of organic and acquired technology to closed solutions plays a role in such fiascoes.

but there are ways to avoid complexity in the process and aftermath of deploying a Voip infrastructure if it buyers take

several things into account. answers from survey participants who have faced or are in the process of confronting these issues point to the following practical guidelines about what to avoid and what to embrace in an ip telephony solution:

4 Ip telephony complexity occurs chiefly when some leading vendors bolt together many different tech-nologies, hoping they will add up to a cohesive whole, said 65 percent of the respondents. they’re right: that’s usually an approach that just doesn’t work, not for ip telephony—or for any other it solution, for that matter. instead, look to systems purpose-built from the ground up as native ip telephony solutions to avoid the difficulties that arise when vendors patch together an array of prod-ucts, usually from different acquisitions.

4 Modifying cumbersome legacy tech-nology to support modern ip telephony demands is not a route to success. Nearly 60 percent of the respondents blamed complexity in ip telephony on

65% believe that

bolted-together technologies are a

major contributor to Ip telephony

complexity today.

57% of respondents claim that complexity is responsible for most of the operating and maintenance cost of

Ip telephony today.

Which of the following have you experienced or do you expect to experience with Ip telephony solutions?

inability to implement without vendor assistance 41%

expensive vendor service and support 38%

business process integration challenges 37%

Lengthy learning curve for administrators 32%

Need for significant support resources 30%

Difficulty for users to get the most out of the solution 28%

expensive operating and maintenance costs 26%

Lengthy learning curve for users 24%

Downtime during installation 23%

Complex management and administration protocols 22%

problems stemming from not being a truly native ip solution 22%

Difficulty of scaling a given solution up or down 15%

Cumbersomeness of doing MaCs (moves, adds and changes) 14%



vendors’ attempts to enable older, tradi-tional tDM solutions for an ip platform. a voIp/unified communications solution that started out with a clean slate has the advantage of being designed to support ease of use for IT and the business, not the vendor’s desire to continue growing revenue from outdated technology.

4 Server-based solutions don’t seam-lessly address modular scalability concerns of companies, especially those positioning themselves for rapid growth. what will reduce complexity for scale-up requirements is a switch-based appliance platform and a distributed software architecture that makes each switch and site an independent call processor capable of supporting thousands of ports. 4 appliances also rule over server-based solutions when it comes to that vaunted dial-tone reliability so characteristic of pStN. Not only do you avoid the moving-parts peril of server-based solutions that can complicate uptime requirements but completely distributed intelligence across voice switches avoids any single

point of failure. automatic pickup of call processing loads as a backup can lend a hand too.

Nearly 60 percent of the survey respon-dents said native Ip, appliance-based solutions that enable reliability as well as scalability features would be very or extremely relevant to their organizations.

4 Given the concerns evident in the survey about long ip telephony learning curves for administrators and users alike, complex management and administration protocols (a factor for almost a quarter of the respondents), business process inte-gration challenges and difficulty in real-izing the most value from a deployment, solutions that smash complexity on all these fronts will be critical.

what’s important for enabling ease of use in ip telephony and unified commu-nications deployments? For administra-tors, how about providing the ability to manage an entire phone system centrally from a single browser-based interface, from anywhere on the network? For end users, there’s huge value in seamlessly enabling an integrated environment for multimedia communications, enterprise applica-tions and personal information to accelerate collaboration. and prebuilt tight integration with core CrM and accounting business processes helps too—as does support for open applica-tion programming interfaces that enable customers to create their own connec-tions between applications and business communications systems.

4 just as a lack of standards across technologies is perceived as one of the foremost contributors to busi-ness technology complexity, standards adherence has a large lead among the steps companies are taking to reduce it complexity in general, according to the survey. open Voip architectures that account for industry-supported open standards such as Sip (for multimedia communication session setup and termi-nation) support ease of integration with ip-standard phones. Standards support is equally important for no-complications integration with networking switches and routers from many leading vendors,

please rate your level of agreement with the following statements.

Some of the leading ip telephony solutions today are complex because they consist of many different technologies bolted together

ip telephony vendors are not doing enough to reduce the complexity that characterizes many of their solutions

Complexity could be eliminated from ip telephony solutions, but vendors are driven by other interests that discourage this

Some of the ip telephony solutions today are complex because they are older traditional tDM solutions that have only been enabled for an ip platform

Complexity is responsible for many of the overall operating and maintenance costs of ip telephony

Complexity is unavoidable in ip telephony solutions, because it is inherent in the technology/process

Solving the problem of complexity in ip telephony solutions is likely to come from a new provider rather than from one of the leading vendors today

65%

60%

58%

58%

57%

39%

37%

58% claim that traditional Tdm

solutions that are only Ip-enabled (instead of real purpose-built Ip solutions)

are a main reason for Ip telephony complexity.



avoiding costs attributable to proprietary solutions that demand network infra-structure upgrades.

4 these days complexity—and costs—can bedevil efforts to integrate ip-based unified communications across cellular and wi-Fi wireless networks. both can be avoided if the Voip vendor offers a way to accommodate smartphones in a business’s heterogeneous ip pbx systems. clearing that hurdle means that roaming employees can take advantage of features such as pres-ence and location on their mobile phones when they need to contact colleagues. More importantly, it means that clients don’t have to dial three different numbers before they can reach an employee who’s away from the desk.

alIgnIng communIcaTIonS WITh BuSInESS procESSESip telephony offerings that provide these qualities promise to take a big bite out of users’ concerns about investing in expensive support and service options to deal with the complexities of deploying and operating these systems. as one survey respondent said of appliance-based, purpose-built, native ip telephony solutions, benefits should also include fewer system outages and easier troubleshooting—both important for minimizing service and support costs.

rather than paying dearly for service and support, it can invest those dollars and staff time in making their Voip invest-ments pay off by strategically aligning communications with business processes. that must happen if employees—whether onsite or mobile—are to realize the full potential of ip telephony. n

Server-based system

Appliance-based system

Purpose-built, native IP solution

IP-enabled traditional TDM solution

Inclusion of disparate technologies

Open architecture for seamless integration of all business applications and processes

Proprietary platform

Pure IP telephony focus

Vendor-agnostic integration with smartphones

Distributed software architecture

No single point of failure: N+1 reliability

Single intuitive Web-based management interface

Multiple management interfaces and protocols

Modular scalability

Forklift upgrades to scale

High reliance on vendor support

high complexity/

high Tco

low complexity/

low Tco

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

source: Shoretel inc., 2010

know the signs of high total cost of ownership and a highly complex Ip telephony system, and avoid them:

To find out more about how ShoreTel can support your Ip telephony needs, please visit www.shoretel.com.

itand ip telephony: don’t just manage complexity; it’s time to beat it

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