Bowlin estimated that his company has spent US$1.3 million on Nortel communications products over six years. About half of that spending has already been recouped because of savings resulting from the use of IP telephony systems. He said that conference call charges of up to $14,000 per month using AT&T Inc. services were eliminated with a $140,000 investment in a Nortel MCS 5100 server. Bowlin also noted that Power Engineers has realized some savings on toll calls that are now conducted over VOIP phones.

He said he expects that Power Engineers' total Nortel investment will pay for itself in two to three years.

Keeping it simple

Vendors have traditionally sold VOIP systems in custom-built packages. Nortel's new program relies on standard preconfigured packages of all the components needed for a new system, explained Diane Schmidt, director of IP telephony marketing at Nortel. She would not provide details of the systems and said pricing has yet to be determined.

"Going from a legacy voice system to IP is relatively complex," Schmidt said. "There's quite a bit of engineering. Every vendor has had a customized approach, but customers needed it to be simpler."