Voice over IP (VoIP) is a new technology that is enabling converged voice and data solutions amongst early adopters and reducing long distance transport costs for service providers. Yet as we speak, resellers are replacing tired TDM equipment at enterprise customers with new TDM equipment, albeit with some form of data integration. However, VoIP is not irrelevant to the bulk of the enterprise market and resellers ignore at their peril todays new upsell potential and the opportunity to gain a strategic foothold in tomorrows converged market space.

If you believe what you see on the television, it will not be long before your enterprise customers are running their accounting software on their telephones. While the power of such a proposition is debateable, the fact is that since the dawn of the information technology revolution, people have become used to making phone calls on one device and recording and processing information with another. We have been doing it this way for the past 40 years and while there is some momentum behind fully converged solutions among early adopters, it will be some time before the bulk of the market makes the move.

Having developed its VoIP gateway technology with service providers, VegaStream is now offering enterprise channels the ability to provide their customers with an opportunity to move into the VoIP world, at a sensible cost level, that enables the customer to retain its existing telephone infrastructure, and, indeed, to improve its ROI beyond the original business case.

VegaStream gateways can greatly reduce, and in some circumstances completely eliminate, intra-company call costs including line rental on multi-site, digital or analog enterprise networks. With the Internet as bearer of intra-site calls, the companys sites can be round the corner or across the globe yet the costs and quality are no different.

The proposition is that simple and that powerful. The customer need not trash existing valuable infrastructure and re-invest. The customer does not need to change telephone numbers or current service provider. The customer does not need to retrain its users. Emergency service and geographic information services are not compromised, and if for any reason the IP network fails, the voice traffic reverts automatically to the TDM system using VegaStreams unique pass through features.

As the customer becomes more comfortable with VoIP, there are opportunities to sell connectivity to one of the new breed of Internet telephony services and to open up the potential for sales of hosted applications and other managed services.

The greatest challenge to the reseller channel is finding new ways to up sell into its existing customers, and equally importantly, to secure new customers. The VegaStream gateway proposition is easily communicated and readily understood. The successful reseller can even avoid talking about VoIP altogether, and offer the customer simply the ability to save money for a modest capital outlay and zero disruption to existing operations. In a recent implementation, a VegaStream customer identified a 100% ROI within twelve months!

VegaStream has made a strategic commitment to building and educating a strong reseller community. The company offers a low risk, low cost entry into the VoIP space for reseller and customer alike. This entry point comes with a powerful, proven argument to reduce the TCO of voice communications today.

For more information please visit www.vegastream.com