Communication is key in any successful business, and that's especially true in this hybrid work era. Employers can no longer expect every worker to do business in a centralized office, which results in people using more communication channels than basic voice calling. That means voice over IP (VoIP) phone systems, long the mainstay of business communications, must also evolve.
Compared to traditional on-premises PBX (private branch exchange) systems, VoIP systems are not only less expensive, but because they're mostly software, they're far more flexible. There's nothing an old-fashioned PBX can do that a VoIP system can't, but there's a long list of things you can do with VoIP that aren't possible using on-premises hardware. Even residential VoIP includes features that are impossible with conventional telephone systems.
With a VoIP system, you can manage all your voice communications from a central web console. It doesn't natter how many extensions are in use, where your employees are located, or even the devices they're using. In addition, most systems also offer features, such as call recording, video conferencing, and team collaboration.
Even more advanced VoIP solutions provide additional functionality through software. They integrate other channels, including conference calls, mobile communications, text messaging, video conferencing, and social media, earning them the classification of Unified Communications-as-a-Service (UCaaS). These systems are generally cloud-based, virtual PBXes that take VoIP a step further by integrating with other software systems to enhance business processes.
When you combine these capabilities with pricing that's generally much less expensive than an old-fashioned PBX and which requires little to no up-front capital expenditure, VoIP is a clear winner.
Making the Leap to VoIP
If this is your first time switching to a VoIP phone system, the options can doubtless be daunting. Your first step should be to figure out exactly how you want your business to use a phone system. If you have an existing PBX, replacing it entirely might not be a viable option. Some system parts can't be easily changed to softphones or even desktop VoIP handsets.
For example, suppose you have a heavy manufacturing environment with outdoor activities, such as a steel fabrication yard or a landscaping company. In that case, your rugged old outdoor phones may be just what you need, and VoIP should only be deployed for office and remote workers. In addition, you must decide which capabilities of the old system stay, and what features will be necessary for the future.
When planning, it's important to include stakeholders from all the critical parts of your business. Naturally, this includes the IT staff and the data security folks, since your voice calls will now be data communications. But the workers who will be using the system to get work done should have their say, too, especially those whose work directly drives revenue and engages customers.
Remember, a VoIP system is much more than just a new set of phones. VoIP platforms, and especially UCaaS systems, can have very long feature lists. But you'll pay for those features, and some systems may pack in more than you'll ever need. Think carefully about which features would add real value to your organization.
Bringing Channels Together With UCaaS
So far we've talked about replacing traditional PBX systems with VoIP, but simply switching from analog voice to digital offers only marginal cost savings. The real value of software-based communications comes from opportunities for flexibility and integration that you can't get any other way—which takes us to the fast-evolving UCaaS paradigm mentioned above.
The features offered in any particular UCaaS solution vary widely from vendor to vendor. Still, most include options for video conferencing, shared meeting and online collaboration tools, integrated faxing, and mobile VoIP integration. Most also offer device-independent softphone clients, which are software that essentially turns your PC or smart device into an extension on the VoIP system. For remote workers, that's a game-changer. And softphones are often the only tool for workers in call centers because they're the front-end window to any CRM or help desk integration, which is a must-have for that job.
A softphone can also combine telephone conversations with text chat and screen sharing. This creates a collaboration session where the group shares screens, documents, and data—no prep, no reserved lines, just button clicks. In the case of a CRM integration, the system might recognize the customer's phone number or some other identifier and automatically pull up the customer's record for the technician or salesperson answering the call. It could even alert a manager to monitor the call if it's a critical client.
These are the basics of UCaaS, but the concept is constantly evolving to include more communication and collaboration technologies. For example, some vendors offer industry-specific features for certain verticals, such as healthcare. These backend software integrations explain the significant growth in the UCaaS market over the last several years, as recent research from Statista(Opens in a new window) bears out.
However, it's worth considering just how much integration you need because options abound. For example, RingCentral's softphone offers a long list of app integrations and features, including not just collaboration platforms but bi-directional email and scheduling. Line2's softphone client, on the other hand, is specifically designed to be simple so users can pick it up quickly. There is a wide spectrum between Line2 and RingCentral, but it emphasizes how careful you need to be when evaluating these systems.
(Editors' Note: Line2 is owned by Ziff Davis, PCMag's parent company.)
Under the Hood of VoIP
UCaaS is the highest layer of the VoIP technology stack. But even if you don't consider yourself tech-savvy, it's helpful to understand a little about some of the underlying technologies that make it work before you make your purchase.
At its heart, VoIP is a method of digitizing voice signals and then sending digital voice information over an internet protocol (IP) network. The analog voice information is translated into digital packets and back again using software called a codec. But those are just the basics.
For a VoIP system to work, it must route calls between users and the outside world. It does this via a virtual PBX that your VoIP provider manages in the cloud. You're essentially sharing a large PBX with that provider's other customers, but because these companies use multi-tenant segmentation, your PBX appears dedicated. The vast majority of businesses also need to route calls to the public switched telephone network (PSTN), and vendors handle this in various ways.
A key technology behind VoIP call routing is the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), and you're sure to hear vendors mention it often. SIP is a text-based protocol that's built on an easy request/response model, similar to HTML, and it's used for the vast majority of modern VoIP phone systems. It also handles phone service, video conferencing, and several other tasks just fine, which is why its use is so widespread. Unfortunately, it has trouble with data security, but more on that in a bit.
What makes SIP so popular is that it's deep and flexible and because it was purpose-built to engage in multimedia (meaning not just audio, but also video and even text) communications over IP networks. It can also handle other functions, including session setup (initiating a call at the phone you're calling), presence management (giving an indicator of whether a user is "available," "away," etc.), location management (target registration), and call monitoring.
The Reality of VoIP and the Internet
After SIP, even further down the VoIP rabbit hole, is the network itself. All VoIP calls will traverse an IP network at some point, and probably more than one. Most VoIP packets will spend some time on your internal home or business network before making their way out to the broader internet, so you'll need to understand a few things about how that works, too.
Your internet connection will need to meet certain minimum throughput levels for upstream and downstream data for the best voice quality. In addition, you'll also need to meet a minimum latency level (that is, the time between when a signal leaves a remote computer and when your system receives it), which is typically measured in milliseconds.
Security is also a concern. VoIP traffic can be intercepted, just like any other network traffic. At a minimum, it's important to have a router that can create virtual LANs (VLANs) and also has the ability to encrypt your voice traffic. These days, you need end-to-end VoIP security for any call.
For larger systems, and for systems where security is critical for things like being compliant to vertical regulatory needs, your current internet connection might not be adequate. The internet doesn't do quality of service (QoS), which means your actual available bandwidth can be unpredictable. Network congestion can ruin a conference call, and activities such as DNS hijacking can put your business and data at risk. That means your VoIP system must have access to a business-class internet link, so discuss these needs with your company's internet service provider (ISP)—and for 2022, think fiber.
And while we all love the internet, it's not necessarily the safest place for your business voice communications. Remember that while the internet uses the IP protocol and VoIP runs over IP, that doesn't mean that VoIP must run over the internet. You can get all the UCaaS software benefits we've mentioned by running your voice network over dedicated lines. It'll cost more, but it will also ensure crystal clear voice quality and the highest level of data security.
Is Your LAN Ready for VoIP?
Don't ignore the fact that VoIP can also increase pressure on your local area network (LAN). If you simply drop VoIP onto your network, that traffic will be processed the same as any other traffic. Your shared accounting application, or that employee who's moving 20 gigabytes of files to the cloud, will get the same priority as a phone call.
The problem is that VoIP traffic is much more sensitive to network bumps and potholes than most general office traffic. When a VoIP system is starved for bandwidth, that translates to garbled conversations, difficulty connecting, or dropped and lost calls. If your business is small and your network consists of one or two wireless routers, then your configuration and testing headaches might be fairly easy. These tasks can be complex and time-consuming for medium and larger networks, which translates into added cost.
Fortunately, most of the providers we reviewed have engineering staff that will contact you as part of your setup process to help your IT staffers test and optimize your network prior to deployment. That's definitely something we recommend, even if it costs extra, but there are steps you can take now to prep your LAN for VoIP and make the deployment process that much easier.
For one, be sure to understand QoS, which we mentioned above. Most business-grade networking hardware will be able to handle QoS in more than one way, so testing which method will handle voice traffic more smoothly in your environment is important.
Next, you'll want to research codecs. This technology is what really gives each call its voice quality because it controls how voice data is compressed, which in turn affects bandwidth usage. Multiple proprietary and open-source voice codecs are available so know which is supported by your networking equipment and your VoIP vendor.
Last, you'll want to take a close look at your current network monitoring tools. At its core, VoIP is simply a specific kind of network traffic, so in the end, it'll be these tools that allow you to see that traffic and manage it across your network. Make sure that the tools you're using support VoIP's needs, especially around QoS, traffic analysis, and network congestion issues.
Once you've engaged with a VoIP provider, their engineers will help you determine your network's basic "VoIP readiness factor" and how to tweak their service and optimize your network so VoIP can run effectively over your infrastructure.
What About Remote Workers?
The trend toward hybrid work has created additional wrinkles for VoIP installations. That's because what we've discussed above has been mainly about optimizing one network, namely your primary office network.
Even before the pandemic made working from home a necessity, many companies were already exploring remote working options for their employees. Keeping remote workers voice-enabled means moving your VoIP system off of a single internal network with one big and well-managed internet connection out to dozens, hundreds, even thousands of small home routers. Maintaining good call quality has been one of the chief challenges IT professionals have faced since 2020.
Things become even more challenging for companies whose hybrid work strategies now include a desktop as a service (DaaS) or virtual desktop component. DaaS is a very attractive solution for IT pros supporting remote workers since it gives them back the tight desktop control they had in the centralized-office days. It's all software, so they don't need to be concerned with supporting local, personal devices other than the worker's home router. This has given DaaS a sudden popularity boost that's been bolstered by some large players entering the game, notably Microsoft with its easy-to-use Windows 365 Cloud PC(Opens in a new window) solution.
Big provider data centers are well-managed and use state-of-the-art infrastructure, so DaaS could be a great solution even for a large number of VoIP conversations. Then again, if a few thousand businesses share a single data center, it might also turn your VoIP system into an unreliable garble generator. Before re-deploying your VoIP softphones into the cloud, you'll want to test that carefully. A better interim solution would be to deploy a mobile softphone to every employee's personal phone or tablet and then start moving them to their virtual desktops in a slower, controlled fashion.
If you've still got a legacy voice system, meaning an on-site PBX with analog phones, then your only real response to hybrid work will be call forwarding to your employees' home phones. If you've got a VoIP system, however, then you've likely got one of the softphones mentioned above as part of that service, and that's how most organizations are meeting the COVID challenge, as evidenced by a survey(Opens in a new window) conducted last year by our sister site, Spiceworks Ziff Davis(Opens in a new window):
When You Don't Own the Network
We touched on softphones earlier. This software lets you use the speakers and microphone on your PC or other devices to mimic the capabilities of a desktop phone, while also conveying the additional advantages of VoIP. Yet while softphones might be perfect for enabling voice calling for remote workers, in reality, they might be another source of voice quality problems, too.
Your IT staff will have lots of difficulties controlling employees' home routers remotely. Often they won't even know the routers' capabilities. The equipment was chosen by the employee or by the employee's ISP, so you're potentially looking at hundreds of different makes and models. Some will have more advanced features, such as QoS, while others won't. Those that do may also implement these features in different ways.
All of this makes configuring and managing home routers very difficult for IT staff. If employees run into voice quality or other problems with their softphones, their first call will be to the IT help desk. Shunting them off to the VoIP provider—or worse, the ISP—isn't a good idea, either. These companies won't be familiar with your company or even each other's requirements, leading to employee frustration.
In practice, most businesses handle employee networking problems on a case-by-case basis. Most home networks can take the extra load as long as the employee ensures that other latency-sensitive traffic, like gaming or video streaming, is kept to a minimum during the hours they need to talk. If some home routers develop problems, IT staff build a queue and handle those one at a time. Sometimes they'll be able to access the router remotely with the employee's permission. In other cases, they'll have to walk that employee through configuration steps to fix the problem. Sometimes the employee will have to live with it unless the company springs for a new router or a higher bandwidth tier from their ISP.
What's Next for VoIP Systems?
Looking beyond today's hybrid work concerns, VoIP makes the most sense for the vast majority of SMBs, and not just because of the lower costs. VoIP is the only way to keep up with evolving communication trends. Software integration lies at the heart of VoIP and UCaaS, so you can't make a purchasing decision without thinking about the future.
Consider each vendor carefully to see what they've done over the last half-decade in product development and keeping up with VoIP and UCaaS trends. In addition, think about what you'll need in the next five years.
At PCMag, we've noticed three trends that almost all the vendors we've tested mentioned as being essential to their customers over that last year. That means they'll be crucial capabilities those vendors will want to add to their platforms in 2022:
Network Mobility. While some VoIP services still offer mobile handsets, these devices seem to be on the downslope. After all, if talking while walking is your goal, why carry around a clunky handset when you should just be talking on your smartphone? Seamless voice switchover based on geofencing is one approach, where if your smartphone detects that it's inside your company's wireless network, it can seamlessly engage your VoIP client over Wi-Fi, not your cell service. Now you'll be making and receiving calls from both your calling plan as well as your business' VoIP service. This generally goes beyond simple calls and includes texts, voicemail-to-email, and collaborative online meetings.
5G Integration. However, a little further down the road is ubiquitous 5G. When that happens, several VoIP vendors seem bent on simply connecting their service to 5G. Workers will then be able to access their business VoIP service wherever they are and across any device as long as it's 5G compatible. While some vendors do this with current mobile technology, the latency limits of 4G often deliver a sub-optimal experience, not just for video and collaboration, but often simple voice traffic, too. 5G is the first mobile service that promises the bandwidth necessary to make true mobile UC a reality.
Artificial intelligence (AI). If your current phone system uses an automated menu to help route customer calls, or even if it extends its tendrils to your website's e-commerce features, then expect UCaaS vendors to pitch you on artificial intelligence. In addition to the chatbot features we discussed earlier, your vendor can also use AI to detect security issues (see below). Or it can work on the reporting and analysis side so you'll have a much more granular understanding of call and network quality, call volume, which apps are being most affected by your VoIP solution, and much more.
VoIP security. As touched on above, the underlying protocol for VoIP is SIP. Unfortunately, SIP wasn't built with security in mind, and hackers are taking advantage of several new attack vectors, including distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks that specifically target VoIP service, rather than the network as a whole. This can result in degraded voice quality, heavy latency, and system crashes. During this round of testing, every vendor we spoke to mentioned security as a significant sales and development factor over the next several years. Potential solutions include managed call encryption with no service degradation, integration with identity management systems, and even AI to detect and respond to attacks as they happen.
These trends are likely to become important selling points in most VoIP vendor-customer pitches for the next several years. While that's great, be sure to fully understand what's being offered and how the vendor will go about delivering it. Is a 5G implementation truly standards-based, or are there some proprietary hardware or software components? How will any new security measures affect overall voice performance, and does the vendor fully support the changing security requirements in necessary industry regulations, like HIPAA and SOX?
If all this seems like a lot of homework, remember that it's well worth the effort. Just about anything you can picture a business needing from a phone or collaboration system can be delivered by a hosted VoIP solution at a more affordable price than purchasing and maintaining your own on-premises PBX. It's just a matter of selecting the right solution for your business.
For more on business communications, check out The Best Business Messaging Apps and The Best Video Conferencing Software.
