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Top tips for supporting IP telephony and unified communications networks

Businesses must make fundamental cultural and operational changes

London, 28 November 2007 - The SAS Group, an international provider of IP-based network and communication infrastructure services, has announced five key areas that need to be considered for businesses to effectively support IP telephony (IPT) and unified communications (UC) systems. The SAS Group warns that organisations should not take support issues lightly, as effective management requires major cultural and procedural change. Failure to properly plan can result in failure of converged systems and can also impact the performance of the rest of the network.

With more than three quarters of UK businesses either planning to implement a converged network in the near future, or already involved at some stage of a deployment, the issue of support for these systems is critical*. However, many businesses are not aware of the full scale and impact of IPT and UC deployments and simply apply the same support functions that already exist for their data networks.

To address this knowledge gap and to help all organisations realise the benefits of IPT and UC, the SAS Group has compiled the following recommendations:

1. Build support requirements into the business plan
To effectively manage and maintain IPT and UC systems, most businesses will need to invest in extra support, in terms of additional monitoring equipment, and increased staffing requirements. This will have an impact on both the capital and operational costs of the project, so forecasting the business requirement is essential from an overhead point of view, as well as from the perspective of seamless and efficient service at all times.

2. Don’t overlook staff training
A recent survey by the SAS Group revealed that 16 percent of businesses plan to use existing staff to support their converged solutions without providing any additional training*. This will cause problems if it is assumed that the experience and knowledge of traditional data-focused helpdesk staff will be adequate for supporting voice. In addition, traditional helpdesks operate on a reactive basis which is not acceptable for business critical voice applications. A further consideration is support hours, and whilst the nature of the business will dictate the individual firm’s requirements, the critical status of voice applications will often mean that basic nine to five support is insufficient – IPT and UC must be allocated top priority.

3. Consider nominating an IPT and UC champion
In addition to training existing staff and creating additional roles to support the new network, the SAS Group also recommends that businesses consider appointing an ‘IPT and UC champion’. This person would be freed from the concerns of frontline support, and would take an enterprise-wide view of the system and its impact on the rest of the network. This expert could advise on trending and capacity planning, enforce policies and assess the potential impact of infrastructure changes, product upgrades and carrier developments – all of which will contribute to the smooth and seamless running of the system.

4. Monitor the whole voice path, not just individual devices
Support for traditional data networks relies on monitoring tools to survey device availability and performance. However, when voice is added to the network, this approach falls down as it fails to take into account the performance of traffic flows between devices or the performance of each network segment on the voice path. By monitoring these elements as well as the devices themselves, support staff will be able to ensure performance and quality of service (QoS) levels throughout, and quickly identify and respond to any faults wherever they are.

5. Don’t ignore carrier equipment
For businesses with more than one office, it is likely that the responsibility for managing and supporting certain parts of the converged network will lie outside the company’s own physical environment and control, instead being held by the carrier and incorporated into a carrier-managed service agreement. The disadvantage of this type of agreement is that companies will generally have to wait between 10 to 20 working days for change requests to take effect; with business critical applications like voice, this is unacceptable.

In addition, managed service routers may prevent the company from using network protocols, like SNMP, Netflow, NBAR and ICMP, which are key enablers for the management of voice and video networks. The SAS Group recommends that businesses avoid purchasing carrier-managed networks and opt for wires-only solutions, in which the customer owns and manages the router itself. In this way, the company can be certain that its voice applications are fully managed and monitored whilst, at the same time, ensuring that any changes required can be effected without delay.

For businesses requiring further information, the SAS Group has also published a whitepaper entitled ‘How to support an IP telephony network’ which is available to download free of charge from the SAS Group's website at www.sas.co.uk/Company/Research.asp. A webcast on the topic can be accessed via www.sas.co.uk/WebEvents/OnDemandWebcasts/

*The SAS Group survey of 160 IT decision makers - August 2007