Dubai - Growing demand for Internet Protocol (IP) telephony in Middle East may witness majority of companies move to IP telephony in next few years, Nidal Abou-Ltaif, managing director, Avaya MENA.
Abou-Ltaif said: "Demand for IP telephony solutions is booming. The IP telephony equipment market in Europe will grow by 50.1 per cent this year, to a market worth $2.26 billion. As more and more companies look to harness the benefits of IP telephony and to move their voice communications onto their data networks. In the Middle East, the situation is the same as businesses look to move from aging voice telephony systems to flexible and cost effective IP-based telephony, which uses a company's data-network to carry voice communications. IP telephony is much easier to administer than traditional and can create considerable cost savings and productivity gains. Many leading companies in the region, such as Emirates Bank Group, Dubai Financial Market, DHL and American Express, have already adapted to IP telephony to enable them to gain a competitive advantage."
We are seeing growth and interest in IP telephony coming from international corporations, government organisations and Small and Medium Business (SMB), sectors. Recently the company has entered into a partnership with Almasa Network Solutions (ANS) to have a wider reach in the Middle East.
The ANS will provide technical support and other benefits to the solution partners that are providing IP telephony to customers. Proper deployment of IP telephony requires network engineers who are able to work with both telephone systems and data networks, Abou-Ltaif added.
The growth of the IP telephony market will be gradual the big changes will be seen in the next decade. Customers have invested a lot in their traditional voice telephony and switchboards, these solutions are stable, they still have value, so most companies don't want to simply throw them out and replace them with IP.
This is why we expect a gradual migration to IP telephony, Avaya has the technology to allow companies to deploy IP telephony solutions that can be integrated with traditional voice solutions, so that companies can, for example, deploy IP telephones at a new branch office while keeping their existing solutions at head office. This allows them to protect their investment and move at their own pace. Like this, we would expect that within a few years all companies will have switched almost exclusively to IP.''
BY SANDHYA D'MELLO
© Khaleej Times 2005
