| » About NACS |
Friday August 8th, 2008 |
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| » About NACS |
Friday August 8th, 2008 |
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Summary: NACS is currently evaluating the migration of the UCI phone system to utilize VoIP.
UCI currently has what is considered to be a traditional circuit-switched private branch exchange (PBX) telephone system based on telephone system architecture that has been developed refined for decades. It is extremely reliable and robust proven technology. The current system is an Ericsson MD110
The MD110 was installed in the early 80s and has been upgraded to the latest hardware and software every 2-3 years to present. These upgrades have allowed NACS to continue to provide many basic and advanced features, and have provided increasingly enhanced system management capabilities. The system is paid for and still has a long useful life. The current operating system version is called BC11. BC11 provides support for Ericsson IP telephones, and offers many new useful features primarily in the area of mobility (features that aid the productivity of a mobile workforce). Future system upgrades promise to provide increased support for IP telephony, new telephone applications that are tightly integrated with other IT applications, and Ericsson promises investment protection through backward compatibility. Ericsson has a product development plans to provide completely redesigned server-based VoIP telephone system called MX1 that can be used to replace or augment the MD110.
The MD110 continues to provide reliable telephone service and advanced features that should meet the needs of most UCI clients in the near future (2-5 years), and could have a much longer useful life (5-10 years) if required upgrades are performed. This puts UCI in a good position because UCI will not have pressure to rush into a “forklift replacement” of the MD110. A forklift replacement would involve completely replacing the existing PBX telephone system and all the telephones, in a very short period of time, with a new VoIP system and new IP telephones. This would be an extremely expensive and time intensive upgrade. It would require a significant upgrade of UCInet, and emergency backup power systems (UPS systems and generators) would need to be installed to provide backup power to all UCInet network devices (Ethernet routers and switches). NACS has not yet estimated the cost of an upgrade of this scope, but it will certainly be a multi-million dollar project. Most industry analysts, and even VoIP vendors support the notion of a systematic migration to VoIP rather than a forklift upgrade. Forklift upgrades only make sense for enterprises who have telephone systems that are near the end of their useful life.
There is heavy competition in the VoIP marketplace and diverse opinions regarding VoIP technologies, standards, and migration strategies. There is much debate about why, when and how organizations with traditional telephone systems should migrate to VoIP, how to justify the cost and to create a business case with a true return on investment and reduced total cost of ownership, when VoIP will be mature enough and ready for enterprise deployments, which vendors have the best VoIP solutions, which vendors will prevail, which standards will be adopted, and how organizations should approach planning and implementation.
NACS plans to leverage its investment in the MD110 while finalizing its strategy for migrating to a VoIP environment. Simultaneously, NACS will increase its knowledge and expertise in VoIP technology, and its understanding of what the vendors in the VoIP market have to offer.
NACS plans to continue to invest heavily in the network and in backup power systems for the network. These investments will be required to make the network IP telephony-ready regardless of which vendor’s solution we select. In new buildings, we plan to design the network infrastructure to be IP telephone-ready, but we want to hold off on installing many more IP telephones until our strategic plans are firmer. There are also currently some feature interoperability issues between the Ericsson MD110 telephones and the Cisco IP telephones that we want to resolve first. Refer to the following link for details: http://www.nacs.uci.edu/telephone/IPfeatures.html.
Within the next 2-3 years, NACS plans to begin a systematic migration to an IP telephone system over a period of 5-10 years. The timing and the pace of the migration depends on many factors including the availability of funds, industry trends, and campus demand for new services and features not available from the current telephone system.
NACS plans to spend time in the short-term continuing to evaluate the available VoIP solutions beginning with its two incumbents Ericsson and Cisco. Although NACS plans to investigate and consider solutions from other vendors, NACS believes that it makes good sense to continue to leverage our existing investments in the Ericsson MD110 and the Cisco-based campus network, and to leverage our ongoing partnerships with these vendors.
Part of the evaluation process was to do limited deployment “pilot” installations of the Ericsson and Cisco solutions within NACS. NACS did some testing of the first generation Ericsson IP telephones, and decided to do a more extensive pilot with the Cisco IP Telephony Solution. The NACS Cisco pilot project has been in progress for about two years. The installation of Cisco IP telephones in the Calit2building is an extension of the NACS pilot project. NACS has not yet decided if Cisco, Ericsson, or another vendor will be the provider of the IP telephone system that will eventually replace the Ericsson MD110, but we are currently favoring the Cisco solution. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses, and both are continually evolving and improving. NACS selected Cisco for the pilot and for the installation in Calit2 because Cisco currently has a strong lead over Ericsson in the IP telephony market. Cisco has more IP telephony experience, a much larger installed base of customers, and many more IP telephony products. Ericsson seems to be taking a much more conservative entry into IP telephony, but they are currently accelerating their pace.
NACS cannot afford to evaluate all the available solutions, but can learn much from the experiences of others. Many organizations and universities have already implemented VoIP or are in the process, and have done extensive product evaluations and RFPs. There are also many industry analyst white papers, and case studies, that compare and evaluate solution alternatives. NACS continues to regularly attend industry IP telephony conferences with our peers. NACS will take advantage of this available information in our planning and decision making processes. Regardless of the VoIP solution provider NACS chooses, it will utilize our Cisco-based IP infrastructure as the network that supports the IP telephone services.
NACS believes it is wise to “wait and see” were the industry is going, who will be the major players/survivors, and what our peers are planning to do before we make a major commitment to a particular vendor or solution. Even though there are fortune 500 enterprises and major universities who have already made complete migrations to VoIP, and are using the technology in full production environments, the technology is still fairly new and is changing and improving at a dramatic pace. Our experiences with VoIP in NACS and in the Calit2building will put us in a better position to make some of these difficult strategic decisions.
