IP telephony migration and the 'what if' factor

Over at the enterprise IT technology and strategy site Silicon.com, Ben King asks "Has the dream of convergence failed?"

Ben poses two main reasons why some companies are hesitant to deploy IP telephony.

Point one: Some enterprise users are afraid that IP telephony will not be able to offer the "five nines" (99.999%) reliability of legacy networks.

"Many companies considering the idea of converging all data onto one network can't quite believe it will be reliable enough," King writes. "Rightly or wrongly, data networks aren't seen as being the most reliable things in the world."

Point two: Some enterprise users will say they have already spent (my quotes, not Ben's) "all this time, effort and money" on existing networks.

Following that reasoning, it might not make good managerial and financial sense to replace an infrastructure thathas been built up carefully and seems to be working well.

Ben then says that, in light of these two factors, most companies that pursue IPtelephony startwith small deployments. That's what I've seen as well -- abranch office here, a department or application there.

And many companies and enterprises that pursue this path usually follow the mantra of "redundancy if something goes wrong"-- even keeping their ever-reliable PSTN phones in a closet.

Is this attitude a prudent "be prepared" strategy?Or is it just a fearful Plan B? Post aTalkBack.