For some attendees, the key question on VOIP is timing. For Riverside County, California, traditional Ericsson PBXes have been solid performers, but are now ready to be phased out, said chief technology officer Greg Stoddard. The county is seeking bids for a top-to-bottom plan for its communications systems, which will inevitably include IP telephony, he said.

But Bill Leung, a network architect at a large insurance company, said that as wonderful as VOIP may sound, it's impossible to make a business case for it when the company's phone systems are only about two years old. They will probably stay in place for 10 to 15 years, and the new technology will probably appear first in new facilities, Leung said.

Also, Cisco and SAP AG gave a presentation to flesh out the vision of a greater network role in applications that they announced in September. Networks are the best place to handle governance, risk and compliance, because applications can't stop some violations of laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, executives of the companies said. That's because an application such as SAP can't control what happens in email or other applications, but everything goes through the network, they said.

(IDG staff contributed to this story.)