We were showcased on ACW magazine for outstanding VoIP implementation

Enriching Calls - by Sng Chee Khiang

Date: 15 Nov 2004

The employees of PortalPeople.Net in Singapore used to talk on the telephone for 1-2 hours with their colleagues in India everyday. And the phone bills were "very high," said See Yen Pong, CIO and one of the directors at the Singapore-based programming and software house.

Astronomical phone bills mattered a lot to an SME like PortalPeople.Net, which could only reap the benefits of the lower cost of labour in India, when a project's size or value is higher than a certain threshold. Otherwise, the cost of the phone bills ate into its profit margins.

But there was no alternative to these calls as "it took longer to communicate via email and MSN Messenger," he added.

The company receives subcontracted programming work from companies in Singapore, Malaysia and India. Established in 2000, the company started as a subcontractor during the dotcom era with its main customer base being startups that require front-end functionalities to be built quickly.

It has now evolved to serving mainly ERP vendors and large system integrators that subcontract various customisations, Web front-end and integration programming to the company. PortalPeople.Net currently has a staff of eight in Singapore and a development team in India with more than 30 members.

Thus, to leverage on the costs savings from farming out projects to the Indian team, PortalPeople.Net implemented a VoIP solution-an Alcatel OmniPCX Office communication system-in the Singapore and Indian offices.

Net gains
The company evaluated a few VoIP products and chose Alcatel's after they saw a demo and were happy that it worked just like a PABX system.

The Alcatel OmniPCX Office is a Linux-based communication appliance that offers telephony, messaging and VoIP to eliminate costs of calling overseas offices, so PeoplePortal.Net no longer has to pay for hefty IDD charges.

See said that the two offices are linked together via an Internet VPN through a 1Mbps leased line in Singapore and a 256K ADSL connection in India.

One of the features that See is pleased with is that the appliance allows the company to provision a local Singapore number for their clients to call; the call is then routed to India where they will be serviced. This has helped to lower helpdesk costs.

Other benefits include a unified dial plan, as well as support for a range of conference equipment and multi-party conferencing. See said the only problem encountered immediately after implementation was the poor voice quality and latency.