Survey: 52% of enterprises already have some VoIP

Bedford, MA, March 8, 2005 -- (MobileVillage) -- According to survey results announced this week, about half of enterprises are already deploying Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) at some level, and most of those that haven't are planning to deploy it.

The survey was conducted by Empirix Inc., a provider of test and management software for VoIP, contact center and Web-based applications. Empirix conducted the survey at the Internet Telephony Conference & Expo held Feb. 22-25 in Miami, and the VoiceCon conference held Feb. 7-11 in Orlando.

Among the major findings reported by Empirix:

• 52 percent of respondents have already deployed some form of VoIP.
• 46 percent have plans for deployment.
• Only two percent have no plans.
• Voice quality and clarity was the number one concern, at 47 percent.
• 32 percent of respondents who planned to deploy VoIP planned no quality assurance steps in their project; yet only three percent of those who had already deployed VoIP actually took no quality assurance steps.
• Of those performing pre-deployment quality assurance, the majority reported using only basic network assessments (45 percent) and/or manual testing (41 percent). Automated testing was planned by just 31 percent of respondents.
• When asked, "Are you concerned about putting a VoIP phone on your CEO's desk?" nearly two out of three (63 percent) answered, "Yes."

"This survey shows that despite a high level of concern about VoIP quality of service, most organizations are not implementing thorough quality assurance practices," says Jeff Fried, CTO for the Enterprise Solutions Group at Empirix. "We found this surprising, since quality assurance solutions could ease their concerns and lead to much smoother VoIP rollouts."

Fried notes that this group of respondents, many of whom regularly attend conferences about next-generation telecom networks, is a sophisticated crowd. "They are generally the leaders in their groups," he says. "This survey indicates that those leaders are concerned about VoIP quality of service, yet many end up addressing quality assurance on the fly, rather than planning for it ahead of time. Testing is still too often an afterthought."

Other findings from the survey:

• Applications (e.g., messaging, call routing and remote/teleworkers) were a more common driver for VoIP deployments than Infrastructure.
• Only five percent of respondents used a broad range of available measures to ensure quality VoIP deployments; most used or planned to use one or two techniques.
• VoIP Security was a key concern, with 25 percent of respondents citing this as their top issue.
• Upgrade procedures and interoperability remain problematic for those deploying VoIP.

Additional survey details are available on the Empirix web site.

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