Transcript Unified Communications and Campus Telephony Futures

Unified Communications and
Campus Telephony Futures
CSG
January 2011, Duke University
Rex Pruess, Michael Pickett
Too many devices?
Define Unified Communications
• Unified communications (UC) is the integration of real-time
communication services such as instant messaging (chat),
presence information, telephony (including IP telephony),
video conferencing, call control and speech recognition
with non-real-time communication services such as unified
messaging (integrated voicemail, e-mail, SMS and fax). UC
is not a single product, but a set of products that provides a
consistent unified user interface and user experience across
multiple devices and media types. - Wikipedia
• UC is integration of real-time & non real-time
communication across multiple devices - WTC, Beitleman
Why should we care?
• UC allows business process integration, i.e. to
simplify and integrate all forms of
communications to optimize business
processes, reduce the response time, manage
flows, allow asynchronous/non real-time
response and eliminate device and media
dependencies.
For Example
Survey Results
Problem/Issue Oriented Introduction
• Who are you?
• Is there a question or issue about unified
communications or the future of telephony
that you’d like to have discussed today?
Questions That Drove Us
Fixed Mobile Convergence of Voice over WiFi -Should the Higher Ed community influence the
cellular carriers to leverage our existing WiFi
infrastructure versus deploying expensive inbuilding Distributed Antenna Systems (DAS) to
address signal issues that impact voice?
Questions that Drove Us
Unified Communications vs PBX -- There’s a
difference between basic replication of
enterprise voice in the IP world versus true UC
software-centric solutions. Are or will these
two converge? How will timing or certain
situations influence our decisions?
Questions that Drove Us
How does video, videoconferencing &
telepresence fit into the UC mix? How
seamless do services need to be to become
successful?
Questions that Drove Us
Should we be planning to shift to vendor
provided services rather than continuing to
invest? Should we upgrade our own services
to VOIP or should we hold down our
investments to the minimum assuming that
voice will see a radical transformation in the
next few years?
Questions that Drove Us
Are there examples of schools that have “gotten
out of the business” by selling, leasing or
giving away their infrastructure to a vendor in
exchange for cash or services?
Questions that Drove Us
Are there components of our telephony services
that are more likely than others to change
rapidly? For example, voice mail,
international long distance...
Questions that Drove Us
Should we eliminate a large percentage of our
desk phones in favor of forwarding calls to cell
phones (school-issued or personally owned)?
Are there risks associated with cloud-sourcing
voice, video and unified communications that
are different than with email?
Questions that Drove Us
Are there particular vendors or services that are
exciting and where the likely reward
outweighs the associated risks?
Should we drop international long distance in
favor of Skype?
General Observations – Gartner
Vern Elliot
• Cellular providers don’t take direction from
universities, they take it from 16 year olds
• It’s all about the network
General Observations - Gartner
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Big driver - things are moving to commodity hardware - TCP-IP protocol
has taken the lead
H.323 is becoming the dominant protocol
Communications are becoming integrated with applications collaboration applications especially (think Facebook)
Consumerization - more powerful with likable features - price point
coming down and similarity increasing - less business specific and more
consumer
Big trend towards on demand, cloud based services
Desk phones will have a diminishing role for at least 10 years especially
in the emergency services (much like the mainframe) - PBXs hybrid and
VOIP will continue to be useful for large volumes of calls, because of the
cost of changing out, PSTN switching and handsets will last a long time.
But, traditional deskphones will be less and less relevant to the average
user.
General Observations - Gartner
• Don’t get tied into a single vendor
• UC starts out looking like a server or technology problem, but it
usually exposes organizational issues
• Need a vision/strategy to resolve the organizational issues over 3-5
years. You probably can’t get there just by picking a vendor.
• Cell phones are leading the convergence, we’re starting to see desk,
soft phone and a mobile phone that ring with a single number
• Google doesn't have an enterprise approach yet
• Microsoft Lync option is getting pretty impressive, may take
another release to totally be there, but definitely on the way
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General Observations
WTC - Phillip Beitleman
Reinvest in wire as you adopt a wireless strategy high performance wiring & wired architecture
Harden the entire network (wired & wireless) – most
of our eggs will be in this basket
Accelerated interest in carrier neutral distributed
antenna systems
Redirect investments to in-building penetration
systems for cellular to make mobile practical
Repaint the entire campus using 802.11N - these two
steps (4 & 5) set up campus for 3-5 years
Carrier Neutral Distributed Antenna
Systems
General Observations - WTC
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Figure out actual costs (unsubsidized) across all
IT services so that funding strategies can be
mapped out
Put together formal, structured plans across
entire technology map and across multiple years
to help identify future funding strategies mobility and virtualization of services will
drastically change life cycle & rate models
Take on longer planning cycles - 10 years for
infrastructure planning
General Observations - WTC
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Don’t throw things away, stretch the life span of things –
only go with VOIP where there is a business case
Overarching interest in UC, but when deployed and the
business cases reviewed, they don’t usually don’t end up
saving money in the near term because of complexity –
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, but keep expectations
under control. 3-5 years before a service matures to the
point that might displace a campus PBX
Rate models need to evolve to include telephony,
network, and IT services - UC needs some IT services
(e.g Active Directory, Calendaring) and those will need to
be accounted for in costing and funding.
General Observations - WTC
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Most current funding strategies are cul de sacs - no future - we’ve
got to transform from thing-oriented funding strategy to serviceoriented strategy - e.g. we used to charge per port or line, but
with heavily deployed wireless, wired network ports shrink by
around 17% while wireless device connections drastically increase.
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Strategic direction - fixed mobile convergence - fire up cell phone
and use it interchangeably with desk phone and calls follow you
when you leave desk. Users want to have the best of both old and
new – they want the tech to extend functionality into their
mobile devices
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WiMax technology has lost the battle - within 5 years LTE will win
because of the cost is so much cheaper
Discussion