Verizon’s advanced outsourcing solution

As VoIP has taken hold in the enterprise, carriers have beefed up their infrastructures with IP switches and MPLS (multiprotocol label switching) backbones that allow them to manage different service levels to accommodate voice. For several years, AT&T, Verizon, and other carriers have also offered integration services to help companies deploy and manage IP telephony. Verizon recently announced it has started migrating to a local VoIP infrastructure, a gradual process that will leave existing legacy equipment in place but use VoIP equipment — mostly from Nortel Networks — to replace aging equipment and to increase capacity.

With the infrastructure falling into place, carriers such as AT&T, Qwest, SBC Communications, and Verizon are offering complete VoIP services — including features such as find-me-follow-me, unified messaging, multimedia call centers, and audio- and videoconferencing — to business customers via Web portals.

What may be even more forward-looking, however, is Verizon’s iobi (pronounced eye-oh-bee) service, which will provide a number of convergence applications intended to complement your existing legacy or IP phone system. Verizon will initially offer the service to consumers and Centrex customers but will launch iobi for the enterprise in the first quarter of 2005. “With the enterprise version, you’ll be able to tie iobi into your traditional, hybrid, or IP PBX,” says Tom Roche, executive director of the advanced products and services enterprise solutions group at Verizon.

According to Verizon, iobi will provide users with a Web portal or desktop application that will deliver real-time call management among voice-enabled devices, desktop call notification, find-me-follow-me, unified messaging, click to dial, conferencing services, and integration with Lotus Notes and Outlook.

“You’ll be able to pull voice mail onto your laptop and listen to it while you’re on the plane. Then you can respond via text e-mail or record your voice and send it to an e-mail address,” Roche says. “With Outlook and Notes integration, you can pull five people out of your directory, put them into a conferencing queue, and have everyone called and brought into a conference or Webinar with Web-based file sharing and collaboration.”

For added convenience, contact information for fellow iobi customers in your address book is automatically updated when they move.

Although Roche concedes that VoIP will be the preferred solution in the future, iobi will provide the same interface to legacy users. A customer voice portal accessible via a toll-free number will also provide access to most iobi features, including the ability to set up conferences. Companies with an existing Cisco or Nortel PBX will be able to control PBX and iobi features through an integrated iobi interface.

The service’s flexibility and capability of integrating with existing phone systems are good indications of what enterprises can expect from carriers down the road.