To an extent, it's more a question of psychology than science. Putting all your eggs in one basket just feels unwise, particularly if that basket is as shaky as the average enterprise data network.
Ian Cox, principal analyst at research firm TelecomView, says: "If you talk to an IT manager about a network with five-nines' reliability, they would look at you strangely."
Siemens' Bishop says: "We have clients whose network design allows for two separate networks. For some of them there are security concerns. They want to protect their voice network from everything that is going on over their data network."
Telecoms equipment vendors argue such an approach is wrong. Paul Rowe, senior manager at Nortel Enterprise EMEA, says: "What's the value of two separate networks? Generally our customers are looking to upgrade their data networks anyway, so it's pragmatic to run them both over the same LAN and get the benefits of IP within a converged infrastructure."
Ultimately, the convergence trend is not a revolution but a gradual migration. And like wildebeest migrating across the Serengeti plains, they may find themselves in some surprising places along the way.
Neal Tilley, solutions marketing manager at Alcatel, says: "Our customers are increasingly saying, 'I need to have the most seamless non-invasive migration possible'. They are looking to make the change to IP but because they already have networks in place they can't afford it."
"The process of converging has to take into account the current situation," says TelecomView's Cox.
"And where you have separate admin and budgets and networks, the process of converging those support budgets and networks, the process of converging will take several stages. And it may be that companies will converge at the desktop first and move onto the other stages later."
Talkback
The combination of VoIP and Wireless (WiFi or preferably WiMAX) will drive convergence. But it is likley notto take place first in the office environment, but rather in the rural areas of developed and developing countries alike. These are largely green fields where there is no current infrastructure, only a convergent solution set will have any workable economics, and the potential benefit is enormous. If only the vendors would target this need, they could have a major impact.