Survey: VoIP planning, installation take more time than expected

Computerworld - Despite significant benefits, voice-over-IP projects take more than twice the time for planning, installation and training than once expected, according to recent research.

In annual surveys of companies conducting VoIP deployments, the average time a company devoted to upfront planning, installation, troubleshooting and training in 2004 was 52 minutes per user, which increased to 133 minutes in 2005, according to Nemertes Research Inc. in New York.

"Companies in 2005 had the realization that they needed to spend more time on upfront tasks," said Nemertes analyst Robin Gareiss, in an interview today. "Implementations are now getting more complex."

Gareiss said that adding more time for upfront activities will obviously increase costs for a project and cut into the return on investment an IT management team projects when lobbying higher management for VoIP funding.

The findings, which have not yet been published, indicate that companies generally "are realizing how much time it really takes" to implement VoIP, Gareiss said. She gathered her data from interviews with 90 IT executives in 2004 and another 90 IT executives from different companies in 2005. The companies were based in the U.S. and abroad and reflected a range of sizes.

Some of the data has been shared with communications vendor Avaya Inc. and might have been what prompted recent keynote comments by Avaya CEO Don Peterson at VoiceCon Spring 2006 in Orlando. "We don't believe IP telephony is a cost-reduction case," Peterson said in his address on March 8. "I fundamentally believe that the real value is how it changes the business" (see "VoiceCon: Avaya CEO says VoIP may not lower costs").

Despite Peterson's comments, Nemertes and other analyst firms have consistently indicated there are many areas of communications cost reductions with VoIP, including savings in adding or moving a phone for an employee or lowering toll-call costs. At new offices, IT managers can sometimes run a single cable instead of two to each desktop, also cutting costs.

Nemertes' research shows that the average cost for one "move/add/change" (MAC) of a phone running on a traditional circuit-switched system is $124, compared to $10 per move with a newer VoIP system. "Typical MAC costs drop drastically with VoIP," Gareiss said. "So, we're absolutely seeing significant cost savings in some areas."

By running only one cable to a desktop instead of two, installation costs can drop an average of 40%, she said. In addition, VoIP customers are seeing drops in the cost of audio- and videoconferencing. Traditional circuit-switched audioconferencing can cost 6 cents to 12 cents per minute, compared with 1 cent to 2 cents per minute with VoIP audioconferencing. Similar reductions are being seen for videoconferencing, which run $200 to $300 per hour for traditional sessions. (Gareiss has not yet calculated the exact cost for VoIP videoconferencing.)