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While the general population of users is being migrated, the organization should also begin to deploy more advanced applications in the original testbed workgroups. These applications can be tightly integrated with networked data applications (as opposed to desktop applications). Among the client/server applications that can be deployed in this final stage include:

  Collaborative applications A server-based telephony architecture facilitates the integration of voice communications to collaborative software that allows multiple people to work on the same document while communicating.
  Voice/database applications At present, computer telephony integration permits a certain level of integration between PBXs and databases; however, deploying such applications is expensive and generally reserved for telemarketing or customer service applications. A server-based telephony architecture allows high-end CTI functionality to be deployed on a much wider scale and to be made accessible by the general user population.

CONSOLIDATING THE VOICE AND DATA ORGANIZATIONS

One of the biggest advantages of deploying voiceLAN is the integration of voice and data network support teams and the eventual reduction in support costs. Many organizations have already begun consolidating their support organizations for voice and data without deployment of a voiceLAN architecture. Migrating to voiceLAN and to a server-based telephony architecture forces organizational consolidation between personnel from the voice and data environments.

Infrastructure Maintenance and Support Staff

The first operational element that needs to be integrated is the maintenance and support of the network infrastructure. In many organizations, these teams function separately. Initially, the voice team continues to maintain the legacy voice infrastructure, but that task should gradually disappear as users/workgroups move to the voiceLAN infrastructure.

The lighter burden for infrastructural maintenance allows personnel previously dedicated to supporting voice systems to be placed into applications development teams with members from both the data and voice environments. This blending of organizations mitigates some of the potential conflicts between groups of people from the voice and data environments. The consolidation of staff from the voice and data environments is also necessary to develop applications that tightly integrate voice and data. Furthermore, it may also reduce worries about job security on the part of voice-only staff, who may fear they have become expendable. Above all, a consolidated organization that supports all forms of network communications in the enterprise is better able to deliver increasingly sophisticated network services and applications to users.

RECOMMENDED COURSE OF ACTION

Achieving the end goal of voiceLAN implementation requires a series of logical steps. Individual organizations may start the migration at different points, depending on their installed base of equipment, economic issues, or other decisions made to meet customer service demands and strategic business goals. The course of implementation may take three to five years. During that time, many technology hurdles will be overcome with standards development. Other issues, such as bandwidth congestion and the need for cost-efficiencies, are causing organizations to take a close look at convergent technologies that can solve problems today.

Various compelling events may precipitate these voiceLAN migration steps. Examples of such events, often designed to simplify management, satisfy growth, or save money, may include:

  Maintenance contract renewal.
  Growth of new locations or branch offices.
  Voice or data system upgrades.
  Hiring of new personnel with new skills.
  Reorganization (e.g., downsizing or substantial moves and changes).
  New bandwidth requirements (backbone and/or selected user workgroups).
  Optimizing wide-area access.
  Delivery of training (i.e., video) to the desktop.
  Improvements in communications via voice-annotated text or other media.

Exhibit 5 summarizes, in table format, the key decision points in the migration to a voiceLAN network. The table is a broad road map for organizations that wish to begin factoring voiceLAN into their network architecture planning today. Decisions about information technology or services investments, and their implications, are grouped in four areas — IT strategy, enterprise requirements, workgroup requirements, and desktop applications.

VoiceLAN in the backbone is the first logical step that can be implemented now to satisfy immediate business goals — notably, cost-efficiency and network management — and lay the framework for a converged network in the future. Implementing voiceLAN in the workgroup and at the desktop are steps that will be taken in the medium- to longer-term time frame.

When selecting a vendor to work with as a business partner in the development of a voiceLAN implementation, corporate network managers should evaluate the vendors’:

  Published plans for voiceLAN implementation.
  Actual delivery of products included in these plans.
  Inclusion of voice as an integral component of an overall strategy, rather than as a future possibility.
  Commitment to emerging voice-enabling standards.

Voice system vendors — or those vendors providing the call servers, telephony sets, and voice software components — must meet additional criteria, including:

  Migration to open, standards-based products.
  Track record in investment potential.
  Demonstrated experience in CTI.
  Partnerships with IT leaders for “best in class” solutions.
  Defined migration path to ATM (e.g., describing which telephony products can be leveraged and used in the new infrastructure and which products are no longer needed).


Exhibit 5.  Decision Points/Recommendations for VoiceLAN Migration.


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