Prior to deploying an IP based Unified Communications solution, it is critical to assess your current environment and to understand how a UC solution will impact your data network. Your assessment should begin by fully documenting your current state. Start by collecting available and relevant documentation, as well as physically inspecting your PBX equipment, software, access lines, equipment rooms, cabling, electrical power, battery reserves, etc. Once the survey has been completed the information can be used as the starting point for identifying changes required to your infrastructure in order to deploy a cost effective and high quality UC system.
I have put a list together of some of the major items that need to be part of your infrastructure assessment:
Telecom Inventory
It is important to conduct a detailed survey of the major hardware and software components of all of your systems. As a minimum you should know the make and model, software releases, licenses (types and quantities) and card quantities.
Analogue Devices
New IP Telephony platforms can handle analogue devices such as fax, modem, and/or phones. However, this can add additional costs to your project because of the need to install separate gateways. Therefore, you need to ask yourself: do you really need this legacy hardware?
Voicemail Systems
Identify the make and model, port capacity, storage and licenses that are in use for basic users and any other features you might have activated.
Often overlooked is identifying the number of menus and complexity of your auto attendant. Depending on your requirements, this could have a significant impact on your professional services budget.
Contact Center
In addition to identifying the make and model, it is important to confirm the number of queues, agents and supervisors. Also, you need to understand the different cycles of the contact center, e.g. peak versus off-peak times.
Many of our clients are still a voice centric call center with fax and e-mail being handled separately. If you are planning on upgrading your contact centre, now is the time to consider blending your fax and email into your voice queues for proper management and reporting.
PSTN Services
For this part of your inventory you might want to compare your telecom bills to your actual PBX location to ensure that all of your circuits have been identified.
Another often overlooked activity is getting your carrier to perform a PSTN traffic study. Often telecom administrators will understand their trunk utilization by reviewing their PBX reports. However, there is a critical difference when you have the carrier perform this study. The carrier is able to identify by each hour how many calls were processed and how many callers were unable to access your system.
LAN/WAN
All elements of an IP Telephony system are now applications on your data network. Historically, data networks were not designed to support the additions of voice or video traffic. Therefore, expect to upgrade parts of your network. This can vary from a simple redesign of your network to include additional Virtual LANs (VLANs), Power of Ethernet (PoE) ports to power your new phone device, or installing new CAT6 data drops for phone locations where a data jack is not nearby.
Reporting/Administration Tools
Quite often, when we work with clients with older systems who are considering a significant system redesign, we find that the reporting and administration tools they have in place can be described in one or many of the following ways:
- All reporting or administration tools work independently of each other, therefore, there is not a consolidated report or a single sign on.
- Tools do not meet the client’s expectations.
- The client has never been trained on the application(s).
- Reports are not reviewed.
- Client never purchased the additional server required to run the application/reports.
- Client does not know how to interpret results.
- Client did not know they even had the tools to do reporting.
If any of the above situations describes your current state, now is the perfect opportunity to implement a solution that has consolidated reporting and a common interface!
Assessing your current infrastructure is critical to knowing whether it can support the requirements of your Unified Communications solution. The list I have provided above is a great starting point for your infrastructure assessment.
Stay tuned for my last post in this series, Pulling It All Together.
Emily Nielsen,
UC Specialist & President of Nielsen IT Consulting Inc.
UC Strategic Planning Blog Series – Table of Contents
Having a plan is the first step to leadership. Follow our eight part blog series to learn key actionable items that are crucial to developing an effective UC Strategy for your company.
- Part 1a: UC Considerations
- Part 1b: UC Considerations Continued
- Part 2: The Importance of a Unified Communications Strategic Plan
- Part 3: The Discovery Process
- Part 4: Defining Your Vision
- Part 5: Identifying Corporate Requirements
- Part 6: Identifying UC Applications
- Part 7: Infrastructure Assessment
- Part 8: Final Thoughts
