Mumbai: IBM has recently expanded its portfolio of services for migrating customers’ telephone systems to Internet Protocol-based (IP) networks, a company press release said.

Many companies are now investigating IP telephony as an alternative to their legacy systems when faced with new phone system decisions, especially when renewing branch office equipment and fitting new buildings.

The new IP telephony and voice over IP (VoIP) consulting and integration services can help organisations save up to 30 per cent on network costs. These services also help increase productivity, flexibility and customer service with new IP-based applications, such as unified messaging, IP-based customer relationship management, and IP-based contact centres.

“Improvements in IP telephony technology are compelling customers to evaluate converging their voice and data networks to achieve cost savings, increase manageability and reap the benefits of IP-enabled applications,” says IBM Networking Services vice-president Colleen Rafferty.

IBM’s new offerings
IBM’s new services help customers migrate their current enterprise telephone systems to a single IP network. When voice-enabled, an IP network can handle voice communications and voicemail, email, fax, call centre applications, personal assistance tools and teleconferencing. IBM also provides the network security and network cabling services that may be needed to support an IP telephony solution.

Key functions include security, performance, problem, configuration, change, capacity, and end-to-end application management across a variety of wireless and wireline networks, server and workstation platforms.

IBM and Cisco Systems helped Group Generali, a leading French life insurance company, migrate its traditional telephone system to an IP-based network.

IBM and Avaya are working together to provide Australia''s largest purchaser of health services, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA), with an Avaya-converged voice, data and phone messaging system. The system will be used to deliver information and services to Australia’s veterans and war widows across the country.

LTG, a German manufacturer of synthetic materials, chose IBM to implement Avaya''s telecommunication systems for the company''s complete communication needs. IBM designed, planned and integrated the solution, which included a multi-channel communications platform and unified messaging. This integrated solution reduces LTG''s total cost, while enabling users to access e-mails, voice mails, and faxes from wherever they are, using different communication devices.

IBM is working toward voice-data integration across its own global infrastructure, and has deployed IP telephony systems based on Cisco''s technology at IBM facilities in Toronto, Singapore, Calgary, Tel Aviv and Dubai. Other sites are planned with a variety of technology providers.

Independent analyst International Data Corporation (IDC) recently named IBM the top provider of network consulting and integration services for the sixth consecutive year.

According to an IDC report, IBM was responsible for 17.7 per cent of the $19.2 billion global market for network consulting and integration services in 2001, over two times the nearest competitor. IBM gained 4.2 points of market share, according to IDC, between 1996 and 2001.

IDC predicts that the market for IP telephony services will grow 49 per cent annually to $40.9 billion in 2007.