As VoIP becomes a standard communications system for the global enterprise, industry experts are actually seeing extensive delays around proof-of-concept deployments converting to production. To help determine the causes of this hesitation, NetIQ, an Attachmate business, conducted a survey to measure customers’ adoption of VoIP, attitudes toward initial deployment and sentiments around ongoing management of enterprise VoIP implementations.

Comprising feedback from over 240 VoIP practitioners predominantly located in North America, the representative sample demonstrates a strong focus on the value of assessment and planning prior to deployment. The results, however, indicate that a high number of VoIP implementations exclude monitoring and management tools designed to monitor Quality of Service – the very tools required to meet the sample’s desired system performance objectives.

Specifically, 46% of the respondents noted they are not considering any type of management or monitoring solution around the initial VoIP deployments, while a staggering 90% stated that the performance and availability is their top concern. This disparity indicates that while system performance is a priority, a rather large percentage of enterprises are not taking enough action to meet their stated objective. Ultimately, call quality and voice network issues will be more difficult to identify and resolve without adequate monitoring and management tools.

Additional findings and concerns include the following:

• Approximately 57% of those surveyed cited the pre-deployment planning and assessment phase of a VoIP deployment as the most critical aspect of their implementation.
• 58% of participants stated that achieving the defined service level is one of their top three concerns.
• A close 57% of respondents noted that secure configuration and provisioning is also one of the top three concerns.
• 64% of survey participants noted that Denial of Service attacks are the greatest threats, while viruses, worms and call spoofing are also placed among threats of highest priority.