Sage Research Releases VoIP Study Results

June 20, 2002 -- Market research and consulting firm Sage Research Inc. (SageResearch.com) announced on Thursday that it has published the findings of the second Sage Technology Roundtable, "VoIP: A Conversation with Early Adopters."

The Sage Technology Roundtables, says the company, are a monthly series of online focus groups involving high-tech enterprise decision makers and examining the issues surrounding a specific technology or service.

The "VoIP: A Conversation with Early Adopters" session took place on June 12, and included discussions of customer experience with the reliability of VoIP and implementation challenges faced by adopters.

"The latest Sage Technology Roundtable has shed much-needed light on the experiences of those in the VoIP trenches, from their take on the technology and implementation to how they have integrated VoIP with their current systems," says Chris Neal, a research director at Sage Research. "The results of this Roundtable give insight to VoIP technology providers as to what motivates their customers to adopt VoIP, and to highlight areas of concern."

The discussions revealed a number of concerns about the development of VoIP technology and services, including the fact that customers would like service providers to manage VoIP call quality, but are skeptical about providers’ ability to do this. Sage also found that customers prefer to evolve to VoIP technology, IP-enabling their existing PBX infrastructures. Participants agreed that the main driver for implementing VoIP in the WAN is still cost savings, and that they require an ROI payback within a year.

Sage says its Technology Roundtable series will continue in July with a discussion of IP VPN technology.