Didata Bolsters IP Telephony Services Play

Greg Hoogerland, executive vice president of managed services at Didata, said the global 24x365 offering will be dubbed Operational Services for IP Telephony.

"The acceptance of IP telephony is starting to take hold," Hoogerland said. "It's created a unique opportunity for us to manage and maintain the entire solution."

Didata has already deployed about 25,000 IP telephones globally, Hoogerland said. The new practice will focus on design and deployment, writing XML applications, and providing management and maintenance services.

The solution provider is finding that a variety of professional services organizations and financial services institutions are interested in the offering, Hoogerland said. Didata, which recently achieved IP telephony services specialization from Cisco Systems, is also finding a particular need for the services in North America, he said.

Specific offerings include Insite, a realtime, online network and systems management service, and Uptime, an online maintenance and troubleshooting service. These tasks in particular are often too complex and time-consuming for in-house IT departments to handle, Hoogerland said.

The integrator is also offering a customer service portal, which provides a Web-based tool for customers to measure Didata's service-level agreements in realtime. Hoogerland said the service-level agreement being placed directly into the portal is a check and balance for a customer handing off IP telephony services to an outside provider.

Pricing was not disclosed, but Hoogerland said the cost will be similar to fees charged for traditional PBX offerings and will include a multiservice fee per phone.