Who's Using Softphones

Four categories of workers are most likely to end up with softphones, Saayed stated. The first is telecommuters who split their work time between home and the office. Softphones let them access corporate phone features even when they're working from home. The second key category is mobile users who make calls through their laptops, for reasons of savings and convenience. A growing subset of this category is mobile-phone users with client software on their handsets, which also lets them access corporate telephony features while away from the office.

The third category is those with telephone-centric jobs, such as customer service or sales representatives. By providing such workers with softphones, companies may be able to save money by not buying them desk phones at all. The fourth category is SMBs that need to save money. Buying IP desk phones for employees can be a major expense, so such companies can cut costs by using softphones almost exclusively.

The Benefits

The savings can be considerable, Saayed noted. Softphones from third-party developers such as CounterPath Corp., IP blue Software Solutions and Nuvoiz Inc. may run from $25 to $50, he said, while those from major IP PBX vendors such as Avaya Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. can cost from $50 to $150. Low-end IP desk phones, by contrast, can start at $140 or $150, with more expensive models approaching $1,000. In addition, softphones are easier to upgrade, because getting the latest capabilities doesn't require buying new hardware.

The Drawbacks

The biggest disadvantage of softphones is, of course, that they depend on a PC. That means you can't just sit down at your desk and dial. In addition, many workers have trouble getting comfortable using headsets, preferring the feel of a handset when they're talking. Some workers and companies also continue to worry about the quality and security of IP telephony. Because of such issues, Frost & Sullivan expects softphones to remain for the most part a supplement to rather than a replacement for desktop phones in enterprises.

Future Trends

An increasingly powerful trend will be the addition of unified communications capabilities to softphones, according to Saayed. "As we see more unified communications come into play, uniting different services under the same GUI or umbrella, softphones will be the path to more complex unified communications clients," he explained. Those services can include IM, video conferencing, text-to-speech translation, advance scheduling of conference calls and Web conferencing. To make such unification possible, softphones will have to access the capabilities of unified communications servers, especially their ability to detect availability or presence across multiple services.

Whatever form future softphones take, one thing is certain: top executives will have the most innovative features first. While technically they may or may not all qualify as power users, they definitely have all the control.