IP telephony

The Pembina Trails School Division in the Canadian province of Manitoba is saving $200,000 a year in telecom costs thanks to its unified communications deployment, which includes Adtran NetVanta software, Windows-based Dell servers and Polycom and Grandstream IP phones.

Skype is diving deeper into the business market with a system that lets companies integrate existing, open VOIP phone systems with its proprietary VOIP service.

I get questions regarding VoIP deployment all the time. Sometimes it is someone looking for simple and cheap Enterprise VoIP, who are unsure if VoIP can be deployed securely with those two parameters in the equation. More often it is the security aware people who are willing to invest almost anything to make it work, but cannot. As always, there is no silver bullet solution for either. If you look at my past opinions, I keep changing my mind between cheap that works, and secure that doesn't. What do you think? Which way should we go in VoIP?

The greatest challenge in VoIP security is that there are very few good example case studies available. There are some very good VoIP deployments. But try to find a white-paper with someone disclosing all the their success stories in building a perfect VoIP network. No luck! Unfortunately much of that data is hidden in confidential documents. Still, I have really loved to see VoIP security emerge and evolve from being a hindrance in VoIP deployment, into a key marketing value. Finally some of those success stories will get a chance to see daylight.