Special Guest Blog by Mayur Pitamber, Voice Tech Experter,  Solutions Product Marketing Manager at Polycom

So the time has finally come to seriously start thinking about replacing those analogue lines with SIP trunks/IP circuits. This is fast becoming a reality as we see some of the largest phone networks in the US and Western Europe planning to turn off their analogue services from 2018. 

With the phone networks switching off their analogue/PSTN service in a little less than three years,  many analogue PBX vendors have also followed suit and announced end-of-life for their PBX systems.

What does this means from a telephony/conference phone perspective?  There are some IT managers that are still uncertain of moving to an IP-PBX. On the other hand, many proactive IT managers want to ensure the least disruption for their telephony/conference phone users as they replace their analogue PBX with an IP PBX, and are also aware of the significant IT benefits that can be realised  such as:

• Cost savings, with the cost of renting a SIP trunk can be up to three times cheaper than renting an analogue ISDN line
• Increased efficiency through centralised phone provisioning, management and deployment, negating the need to send IT engineers out to individual sites
• Better network resilience and the opportunity to deploy robust and innovative telephony/conference phone applications and services
• Significant reductions in IT service requests from end users, who benefit from full HD sound quality   

Working with our customers and partners, we are seeing the following scenarios happening:

• Companies moving completely from an analogue PBX to an IP PBX
• Replacing an analogue PBX with Microsoft Lync for a better group collaboration experience
• Companies using both an IP PBX and analogue PBX for as long as possible

Contact your Polycom Channel Manager for information about Analogue2IP initiative set to launch in Europe this summer. This interactive campaign is perfect for customers looking to transition to IP.