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VoIP More Than Just Another App On The Network |
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Written by Adam Gosling
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Friday, 21 July 2006 |
Large VoIP pilots often fail first up because corporate IT
departments fail to properly understand what affect VoIP will have on their
data networks. A lack of due diligence and behavioural factors are the biggest causes.
Nathan Brumby, General Manager - IP Telephony of Integrated
Research, explains it is a big jump for a company to move from reliance on a
phone company like Telstra to handle its telephony requirements to doing it
themselves.
"They are just not aware of the responsibility inherent in
taking over their own voice network and it surprises them when they get to the
point of testing or turning on the system," he said.
"I think what happens is that large enterprises try to
approach IP Telephony from a data perspective. They think that a network that
is stable enough for data and the management tools that they have for data
should be okay for voice, but they are not."
Brumby says Integrated Research can track the way large
companies come to their website, download a few white papers and then refuse
help when the company contacts them. Then about 12 to 18 months later they are
back saying they can't get it to work.
"Part of the issue is behavioural," says Brumby. There's a
mindset that VoIP is just data. The reaction is typically human. You can tell
them it's different, but until they experience it themselves they don't
understand".
Brumby explained the need for five nines availability on the
network has to be achieved after the voice is added not before.
It's only when they get to the point of implementing it that
the reality hits. You can have email go down for an hour and it's not critical,
but with voice a ten minute downtime is often intolerable, he says.
Because most IT departments see VoIP as just another
application on the network there is often not enough due diligence done to
ensure success.
"Without question there is a rational process driven way to
implement IP Telephony," says Brumby. "We have a whitepaper that documents the
generic process. Like any IT process it requires really good design and
planning, along with network assessment that can support that. It all comes
down to being smart about it."
Often though it's the stupid things that end up causing
problems, he says. People do things like assess their network at midnight or on
a Saturday. Or forget that everybody gets on the network at 12 o'clock to make
lunch plans. We see real world examples where they test on a Saturday and see
that it can support VoIP.
Everybody comes in at Monday morning, checks their email,
starts making phone calls and it crashes the network, he said.
"The ability to accurately assess the network capability is critical
if you spend more time and money you will have more successes down the road,"
says Brumby whose company sells IP Telephony performance monitoring tools.
"The other thing is that organisations change over time and
the use of the network might change, so you have to keep monitoring."
Brumby explained that while the traditional network management
tools are getting better they don't' have the features you need to address the
voice centric performance metrics.
They can't tell you if somebody picked up there phone and
didn't get a dial tone, of if an outside party is trying to call in and it
doesn't connect. Integrated Research specialises in developing tools for large
IUP Telephony installations starting with a minimum of 1000 seats.
"On one of our major products there are five and half
thousand data points monitored," said Brumby.
When you switch over to IP Telephony you are going from using
a telecommunications company that has a huge multi-billion dollar infrastructure
to managing this yourself. So knowing much jitter and delay there is on a call
is important. You have to monitor these metrics in real time and have alarms
set , said Brumby.
"You can't go for 24 hours before you find out that the call
quality is no good. That's too late," he said.
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