Avaya CEO Pitches VoIP as way to Enhance Business Communication

7:00 am on March 20, 2006 | Category: Business, VoIP

voip.jpg

Avaya CEO, Don Peterson, made a surprise statement at the VoiceCon Spring 2006 conference, stating that companies shouldn’t switch to VoIP telephony networks to reduce communication costs, but to improve the quality and efficiency of their business operations.

Such a statement stood in stark contrast to a lot of the other speakers at the conference, including companies that have recently deployed IP communication networks. Most players in the enterprise VoIP business try to stress the most obvious benefit of the technology – cost savings.

In his keynote, however, it was clear that Peterson was going at things from a different angle. He was trying to portray VoIP not as a cheap, compromise technology, but as something that can actually improve business operations.

A harder message to explain? Perhaps; but many businesses are worried about switching to VoIP due to quality concerns. In order to be a true alternative to fixed-line telephone service, VoIP needs to be perceived as a high-quality technology, and not something cheap and second rate.

It is quite possible that a CEO like Don Peterson could do great things for his company by taking the time to better describe the individual benefits of IP voice communication for each client, and treating simple cost-savings as a byproduct of the innovative technology at hand.

Related Articles:

    None Found

    2 Comments »

    RSS feed for comments on this post.

    1. This item seems to have been written by someone who was not at Peterson’s speech but is commenting on something they read in the coverage. In fact he spoke for 20 minutes or so, and aside from the one comment regarding costs, described in detail the benefits of IP telephony, chiefly the abilities to serve customers better, increase customer loyalty, and recover from disasters more readily.

      Also regarding costs, he acknowledged that most business cases for IP would have to start with an ROI justification, but that benefits other than cost reduction would prove to be the ultimate, superior benefits of a deployment. Peterson’s guest, the CIO of Allstate, proceeded to prove that out in her 10-minute speech following his.

      Comment by Chip Mellor — March 20, 2006 #

    2. Thanks for that quick rundown of events. Great to hear from someone who made it to the conference. :)

      Comment by Jeremy — March 20, 2006 #

    Leave a comment

    XHTML: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>


    Published by TeleClick Enterprises
    Edited by Jeremy Maddock