Download UC Implementation Strategies

UC Implementation Strategies
By Robin Gareiss, Executive VP & Senior Founding Partner, and
Irwin Lazar, VP and Service Director,
Nemertes Research
Executive Summary
Organizations increasingly are adopting unified communications in the form of
complex projects that involve multiple IT and business-unit leaders. In order to
increase the chances of success, it’s imperative for IT staffs to adhere to
implementation best practices. This paper examines common characteristics of
successful unified-communications implementations based on Nemertes’ research data
and experience with enterprise clients.
The Issue
As IT staffs forge ahead on UC projects, many users and buyers ironically do not
fully understand what UC is. Nemertes received various responses from IT leaders who
responded to an open-ended question: “How do you define unified communications?”
One common factor is “presence,” which defines the ability for applications to
exchange information about the availability of individuals, groups, or roles, to
communicate. Presence status may be as simple as “on a call,” or as complex as “on my
cell phone with a client; will be off by 2:30 pm; IM if urgent.” The senior IT manager for
a global manufacturing company sums it up best when he says UC is “asynchronous
communications and synchronous communications converging into a single integrated
tool set to deliver voice, video, and data with presence and unified messaging.”
Delivering a communication and collaboration environment in which
applications are integrated to share presence, enable users to initiate multiple forms of
communication through a common dashboard, and let users control their own
availability for communications requires careful attention to both integration and policy
management. In addition, those responsible for operational support must ensure that
they create the ability for proactive performance and availability management, while
paying attention to implementation best practice that get the project off on the right
foot.
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Integration & Interoperability
Interoperability is the biggest challenge in achieving a successful UC deployment,
according to 58% of IT professionals who participated in Nemertes’ research
benchmark. Getting various legacy and new systems to share presence information,
support click-to-call or click-to-conference, and enable easy management is a difficultto-overcome challenge.
To mitigate integration and interoperability challenges, Nemertes recommends
companies standardize on SIP for system-to-system connectivity. Doing so reduces
integration complexity by creating a single communications protocol layer for all UC
elements. Enterprise IT architects can simplify deployment and management by
managing one suite of protocols rather than separate protocols for each type of UC
application. IT managers also can take advantage of emerging SIP-based services for
extranet connectivity to support communications and collaboration sessions across
company or network boundaries.
Integrating SIP with legacy systems such as TDM or video-conferencing
platforms based on the ITU H.323 protocol often requires gateways. An alternative
approach melds the two islands into a single unified infrastructure, with a shared service
server at the core. Examples include SIP session border controllers capable of
transcoding between SIP and non-SIP protocols. For video, one may deploy a server
capable of supporting both H.323 and SIP. This server functions as both a H.323 MCU,
as well as a SIP proxy server, enabling architects to connect either H.323 or SIP
endpoints to a single set of core controllers. In this approach, feature transparency is
maintained. The core server (or servers) can provide presence information to other UC
applications, while supporting the ability of UC dashboards to initiate conferences
regardless of endpoint signaling protocol. This later approach offers a lower total cost of
operation, reduced architectural complexity, and elimination of feature disparities.
Additional interoperability requirements for a successful implementation
include:
 Validate interoperability of existing directories: Multiple directories must be
consolidated into a single directory infrastructure to avoid overlap.
 Lack of usable fax services: Fax over IP has always been the thorn in the side
of VOIP. While most VOIP vendors support International
Telecommunications Union T.38 enable fax over IP between IP-enabled fax
machines and PSTN gateways, support for fax has not yet materialized in the
SIP-trunking market, and interoperability among T.38-based solutions is
problematic. Even though fax volumes continue to decline, fax is still a key
requirement for contracts. Companies often address fax over IP by deploying
fax-to-email solutions for in-bound reception, or by using scanners, or fax
machines connected to POTS lines for 0utbound faxing, the later resulting in
additional cost and complexity.
 E-911: While some SIP-trunking providers support E-911 services, passing
location information on to local PSAPs (Public Safety Answering Points), IT
executives tell face significant challenges in integrating SIP trunking with
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their E-911 architectures. Key issues include the inability for SIP-trunking
providers to pass location information to E-911 call routing services. Most SIP
providers are limited in their service areas, meaning that they can’t route E911 calls to local emergency services offices out of their operating locations. IT
architects often rely on local POTS lines for 911 access, as with fax, adding
additional cost and complexity.
Security
Often, companies implement their UC strategies without the involvement of the
security team, or with involvement that comes far too late in the implementation. IT
leaders must consider the following security issues when implementing a UC strategy:
 Security: SIP trunking creates a new vector for attacking enterprise phone
systems. In most VOIP architectures, the PSTN serves as a firebreak between
the enterprise phone system and the rest of the world. Risk of attack from the
Internet is low as the VOIP system is physically and potentially logically
isolated from the outside. Introducing SIP trunking changes this, as the
enterprise phone system is now vulnerable to IP-based attacks via the SIP
trunk. Session border controllers or SIP-aware firewalls can mitigate security
concerns.
 Eavesdropping: VOIP traffic carried via SIP trunk across a service provider
network is often not encrypted, meaning that the opportunity exists for a
rogue person to listen in on private conversations via comprise of service
provider networks. However, this threat is no different than the risk of
unauthorized interception of any unencrypted IP traffic carried across a
service provider network.
 Address security: Implementing UC creates new threats toward enterprise
voice systems, such as data loss and fraud, as well as attacks against the
underlying data-network resources. Until now, network managers have
primarily worried about these latter threats, such as Denial of Service (DoS)
attacks that disrupt not only voice, but other application services, as well. As
VOIP and UC systems increasingly peer with external networks via SIPtrunking services and direct voice-to-voice peering services, they face new
threats to their VOIP systems. In addition, mobile and wireless services create
new vectors that external attackers can use to target business VOIP networks.
IT decision-makers should take advantage of security architectures that
adequately assess risk and implement mitigation techniques to protect against
attacks on UC equipment and the underlying network elements. Investigate
UC security platforms and services as part of your deployment.
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Provisioning, Monitoring, Management
IT architects cite the need to deploy tools that let them manage and troubleshoot
performance of UC applications. In many cases, engineers still rely on packet capture
and manual examination of flows to determine problems, a long and arduous task that
requires technicians to possesses not only a solid understanding of SIP message flows,
but also vendor proprietary extensions to SIP. In some cases, engineers may need to
understand proprietary protocols, as well.
To address these concerns, many companies turn to Managed Service Providers
(MSPs) to assist with developing a management strategy, as well as assisting with
implementation. More than half of IT leaders say UC-professional services are vitally
important. Similar to VOIP, many factors influence the level of interest in professional
services and which services are required, including the number of trained IT staff and
the complexity of the products they’re deploying. “A lot of this (UC) isn't in our core
competency,” says the CIO of a healthcare facility. “So it's very important that we utilize
professional services.”
Figure 1: Monitoring & Management Lifecycle
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Key requirements for a successful management strategy include:
 Make sure you or the MSP have administrative tools assisting the
implementation from Day 0. These tools help with planning and
implementation, as indicated in Figure 1.
 Conduct a pre-deployment test. Run simulated traffic prior to
implementation to ensure the WAN is properly sized to handle new real-time
applications. You may need to add more bandwidth, for example.
 Validate that the LAN has Power Over Ethernet, and that LAN switches will are appropriate for the functions of the UC applications you plan to deploy.  Consider Application Delivery Optimization tools to help improve
performance of applications by reducing latency and compressing traffic.
o In a one-for-one replacement of TDM PSTN trunks with SIP trunks,
bandwidth costs for SIP trunking can exceed TDM costs due to the
additional overhead required for SIP compared with 64 Kbps channels for
TDM voice. Growing use of high-quality compression algorithms such as
ITU G.722 and G.729 will allow SIP trunking adopters to reduce
bandwidth requirements.
 Managed what you have. Make sure you have tools in place for asset
management.
 Simplify provisioning. Consider tools that will assist with automated
account/voicemail/unified-messaging provisioning using a consistent
employee directory.
 Discuss with the WAN team how to best leverage Class of Service/Quality of
Service with each real-time and non-real-time application to achieve
predictable performance on all applications.
 Test: Test interoperability of existing contact-center solutions with IP PBXs.
 Plan for disaster recovery. Run trials to determine recovery time in the event
of an outage. You may find your disaster-recovery strategy does not meet your
stated requirements, and resolving that will take some planning and effort up
front—which is much easier than retrofitting on the back-end.
Organizational and Business Strategies
Addressing integration, security, and management aren’t the only requirements
for a successful UC implementation. IT architects and buyers need to pay attention to
the business and organizational sides of the project, as well.
Key best practices include:
 Build the business case: Prior to implementation, make sure you have buy-in
from the business-unit leaders, and make sure they understand the benefit of
the new technologies. Align business priorities to technical capabilities
desired in the UC project.
 Define success: Before any implementation starts, define your success
metrics. What are you measuring today (from technology, operations, finance,
and productivity perspectives)? What will you compare those to tomorrow
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when the implementation is complete? You want to document success using
these metrics.
 Plan the project. If multiple vendors and providers are involved in the
implementation, hold initial implementation meeting to discuss timetables,
interoperability, and to set expectations. One of the biggest downfalls of UC
implementations is vendors not working well together because they don’t have
clear direction or expectations from the customer.
 Manage the outsourcer. Outsourcing doesn’t mean out of mind. You need a
team of internal IT staff members to manage the relationship with the
outsourcer. Make sure those people are adequately trained in managing such
relationships. For example, make sure you:
o Have a clearly defined escalation procedure with home, mobile, and work
numbers, as well as email addresses for all on the list.
o Clearly establish at what points you will escalate (and always follow
through so the vendor knows you mean business).
o Document regularly scheduled status meetings throughout the
implementation and once operational, and identify the information that
should come out of those meetings.
o Make sure you have input into product upgrades and feature
improvements.
o Make sure you have input in any account team changes, and that you have
early warning when a key person is leaving (so you can offer the person a
position at your company, if it makes sense).
o Ask SI or MSP how they address the following during implementation:
 Incorrect device setup
 Incorrect gateway configurations
 Mis-configured dial plans
 Mis-configured voicemail/UM box setups
 Resolve voice-quality issues
 Address vendor interoperability issues
o Establish Service Level Agreements and associated penalties for the
following metrics:
 Uptime
 Latency
 Jitter
 Mean Opinion Score
 Mean Time to Repair
 Recognize the need for adequate training. IT executives are experiencing
challenges in finding those well trained in UC and SIP implementation and
management. Concerns extend beyond hiring their own staff to finding
qualified VARs, consultants, and even vendor engineers. Successful UC and
SIP implementations require cross training between telecom and network
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teams to understand the inner-workings of the technologies and the
interworkings between them.
o Plan for both IT and end-user training. Though IT training doesn’t have to
be as intense if you use a hosted or managed service, your team must know
enough to challenge vendors and make sure the technology is doing all it
should be doing.
 Developing a business case for SIP and UC. Those who have quantified UC
benefits point to tangible returns on investment from deployments of onpremise applications, UC in the contact center, UC for field workers, reduced
phone bills, travel reductions, and increases in productivity. The SIP-trunking
business case typically focuses on straightforward cost reduction when
compared to ISDN PRI lines.
 Clearly define and test trouble-ticket escalation to ensure quick response to
your problems.
Conclusion
UC implementations are multi-faceted and require careful planning to prevent
problems with interoperability, management, security, and organizational strategies.
Keep in mind that deploying a UC solution isn’t a one-time exercise. Make sure you’re
appropriately prepared for future technologies, such as:
 Virtualization of the UC server
 Desktop virtualization of your employees
 Fixed-mobile convergence
 Moving to hosted/cloud and software-based solutions
Make sure your project plan includes regular refresh cycles based on vendor
upgrades, user changes, and new technology development.
About Nemertes Research: Nemertes Research is a research-advisory firm that specializes
in analyzing and quantifying the business value of emerging technologies. You can learn more
about Nemertes Research at our Website, www.nemertes.com, or contact us directly at
[email protected].
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