OCTOBER 2018CIOAPPLICATIONS.COM9network is tweaked to provide the enhanced quality of service to Voice traffic. The human skillset required to manage and tweak the customer network is expensive for small to medium businesses in the United States. The Broadband circuits on which VoIP packets rides has become cheaper recently with increased bandwidth. Even though it is cost effective they are single-threaded and disruption in broadband services can directly impact VoIP services for businesses. Using redundant circuits at the customer site solves the single point of failure challenge but it does introduce disruption during circuit fail over. The introduction of Software Defined Wide Area Network (SDWAN) technology has provided answers to all the challenges for VoIP.VoIP with SDWAN Leads the WayThe SDWAN technology separates the control and data plane layers. The SDWAN Control plane hosted by the VoIP carrier allows the carrier to manage the WAN parameters for Voice traffic effectively. Hence specialized human skillset is not required at the customer location to manage the WAN for optimized VoIP performance. SDWAN allows multiple broadband circuits to be deployed at the enterprise network. It allows seamless failover of voice traffic during broadband circuit disruption. The SDWAN node also known as edge forms an encrypted tunnel known as overlays via each of the circuits. The virtual tunnel allows the customers to have end to end quality of service monitoring capabilities. Just as the traditional POTs system had the last mile all the way to the customer's network, the SDWAN technology provides end to end quality of service visibility for the customer's voice traffic. For true end to end quality of service to be delivered for VoIP, customers should ensure that the SDWAN voice gateway is hosted in the service providers Voice carrier infrastructure network.VoIP Trends and MillennialsThe introduction of millennials in the work force and push for digital transformation industry wide is driving innovation on the VoIP segment as well. There has been a strong trend to move VoIP from traditional plastic phones to virtual desktops and mobile clients. The demand for collaboration has stretched into the VoIP segment with innovative products been deployed show casing integration between Voice and video calls, instant chat messages, SMS, file sharing, ad-hoc voice conference rooms and desktop screen sharing capabilities provided using a single client application. Businesses are noticing significant return on investment in sales acquisition for VoIP services that integrates with back end CRM systems. This allows business to track their internal processes and customer behavior patterns. Not all the user base is comfortable with Voice calls been attended by soft clients. The users that rely on plastic phone systems have to deal with adjusting to the advanced feature sets (Key system functionalities, Shared call appearance, Call Park, call pick up) provided by VoIP solutions. In some instances they have resulted in users been dissatisfied with several key pushes required to use these advanced features. Few carriers in order to bring about better customer experience have worked with phone equipment manufacturers to build specialized configurations to minimize these button pushes for several of the advance features. The customers should ensure that VoIP carriers are nimble and open to work with customers to build solutions that best fit their needs. The introduction of millennials in the work force and push for digital transformation industry wide is driving innovation on the VoIP segmentVOIP, SDWAN AND MILLENNIALS
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