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Slip Cocoon’s new Thermal Liner into your bag to actively regulate temperature and moisture for a better nights sleep! • Superior temperature regulation with Outlast ® technology • 100% CoolMax ® for quick-drying moisture management • Mummy or Rectangular-shaped sleeping bag liners • MummyLiner in Women’s and standard length Available at Outdoor & Travel Shops Nationwide WWW. COCOONUSA. COM 1.800.254.7258 wired and wireless devices. Such services can automatically forward and direct all calls (desk, mobile or home phone, for example) to whatever device is selected by the subscriber according to time of day, who is calling, the type of call or other factors determined by the subscriber. This is not down-the-road technology. Rather, theses capabilities already exist, with most already on the market. And a good deal of these technologies now are working their way down market, from Fortune 1,000 and carrier-level networks to within the reach of small and very small businesses. What makes the move down market possible are a current crop of fully managed IP communications solutions that remove all the big hardware and complexity from the customer premises and places them on the service provider’s facilities. At one time, deploying advanced and customized communications applications required sophisticated equipment reside at the customer site or sites and a tech staff be employed to run things. That’s no longer necessary in the software-driven IP-based environment, where voice functionalities, settings, security, management and remote monitoring all can be hosted securely by the providers and delivered for a fraction of former prices. One such example is multi-location phone service. Capabilities such as fourdigit extension dialing to multiple stores and home-based workers, hunt group lists, automated attendant/interactive voice response systems that answer and direct calls across all extensions or offer a menu of selections (Press 1 for store hours, 2 for directions, etc.) and self-administration tools now can be delivered without the installation of expensive private branch exchange (PBX) systems. Unified messaging, meanwhile, combines a user’s voicemails, emails and faxes into one in-box where they can be viewed and/or directed to the desired device. Other capabilities of a unified messaging suite typically include call screening and preview, do-not-disturb, one number to receive all phone and fax messages, call detail records, message archiving and “find me follow me.” Among the services gaining early traction with small business executives and owners, “find me follow me” automatically dials a pre-assigned group of phone numbers until the subscriber is found and the call is answered, depending on how accessible that user wants or needs to be. Users also can direct calls based on day, time, who is calling or availability, and special rings can be assigned to certain callers. Combine the capabilities of find me follow me, automated voice response, multistore phone service and click-to-call Web links and the potential includes providing a link from an Internet-enabled PC located on a sales floor that a customer can click to get a question answered by any department or expert at any of the connected stores or home offices, no matter where that employees is at that moment. More to the present, existing hosted IP telephony services include many of the above features at prices that are below what most retailers likely pay for their standard business phones lines from the dominant telecom providers. IP-based providers will come knocking with promises of as much as 50 percent or more savings off your current phone bill, but something around 20 to 30 percent is more reasonable, says Frank Paterno, vice president of marketing for Intelliverse, a provider of hosted IP communications. Intelliverse’s CompleteCall hosted VoIP service, for example, offers local phone numbers, unlimited nationwide calling, multi-store services, unified messaging, automated attendant, find me follow me, one number service and more for about $50 a month per line. To get on board with the service, it’s likely new desk phones will be needed or an adapter be installed so the old phones can interact with the new network. It also assumes an existing Internet connection can handle the load, as the Complete- Call solution falls under the “bring your own broadband” scenario. And since voice traffic is now traveling on the data network, there must be adequate bandwidth or voice quality can suffer, which may be okay for interoffice calling but is not something customers and partners should experience. The big issue with the “bring your own broadband” approach is the hosted provider has no control over their customers’ “last mile connection,” which brings the Internet into the building. So if the Internet connection is spotty or temporarily goes down, so might the voice services in some capacity, unless a back-up method is deployed. 22 | InsideOutdoor | Spring 2008
In most cases, retailers with a T-1 line or higher are good to go. A typical digital subscriber line (DSL) or cable modem connection, meanwhile, normally can handle three to four phone lines, says Paterno, and still leave enough room for Internet usage, assuming Internet usage at a location is not too heavy, such as multiple users on the Web surfing simultaneously and heavy downloading/uploading of video and graphic files. In terms of bandwidth allocation, “when it comes to voice over data, it doesn’t really matter whether you have three or four phone numbers or how many phone lines or how many people are at a location. What matters is how many people are talking or using the Internet at the same time,” says Paterno. In other cases, some IP-based providers will require that customers purchase Internet connectivity from them in order to get the IP communications solution, or purchase the data connection from a partner provider. This approach allows the service provider to control the last mile connection to better guarantee the quality and reliability of the service. It may or may not save the customer money over their current voice and Internet services spending. Since the voice and data networking requirements of most specialty retailers are relatively simple, either option should be viable in most instances. But quality and reliability, as well as security, are important considerations, and so far have been the primary drawback of VoIP services. Where the old public switched telephone network (PSTN) provided 99.999 percent reliability, IP-based voice networks tend to hover around the mid- 90s in terms of service reliability, particular those services that utilize the “bring your own broadband” approach. On the other hand, performance assurance continually improves, with service level agreements now being offered by select IP telephony distributors. After all, VoIP still may be a novel concept to the greater population, but the platform is actually somewhat mature, widely deployed for several years across telecom carrier and enterprise networks. One big reason why most people are not yet familiar with VoIP is because the large incumbent phone companies (Verizon, AT&T, Qwest) have been given little incentive so far to cannibalize their existing revenue streams by offering customers a cheaper way to do the same thing: make phone calls. The shift is coming, however, as global networks migrate fully to IP and the old circuit-switched, copper networks, which are more complex and costly to manage, manipulate and upgrade, are eventually retired. Already, investment in the old networks has all but ceased. That’s not to say you will wake up one day and your legacy-based services will be turned off. The point, rather, is that a time is coming when the lower cost structures and higher levels of functionality and innovation made available through IP networks will be the norm, so the bar will be raised in terms of how a company communicates internally and with its customers and partners. And it’s always best to be somewhat informed and prepared for when the time comes to make the switch. Spring 2008 | InsideOutdoor | 23
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