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IP Convergence
Beat the Rush
7/1/2008
Getting Started
Before a university can embrace UC, it needs to have a solid VoIP network foundation in place.
Consider the situation at Indiana University, where a range of gigabit Ethernet and WiFi networks-- leveraging gigabit Ethernet and 10 gigabit Ethernet switches from a range of companies-- provides reliable pipelines for unified communications. The university uses a communications server (one of the 2100 product family) from Nortel Networks in order to give 18,000 staff and faculty members a single system for telephony, e-mail, collaboration, presence, instant messaging, and desktop applications, notes IU CIO Brad Wheeler.
Rich Unified Apps, Defined
IT MANAGERS sometimes focus too much on infrastructure and too little on the applications they're hoping to deploy. Here's a sampling of unified apps that are gaining traction on college campuses:
- Telepresence, the next generation of videoconferencing, where high-definition TV and surround sound create the illusion that participants in separate rooms in various locations are together in one virtual room. Starting at about $300,000 per conference room, telepresence initially was too expensive for many colleges. But lower-cost solutions from companies like LifeSize Communications are starting to enter the market.
- Presence, wherein the network automatically discovers the user's location and routes e-mail, phone calls, and instant messages to the most appropriate device. This is especially valuable for students, professors, and administrators who roam between multiple systems (PCs, laptops, smart phones) and network locations (home, office, classroom).
- Rich customer relationship management (rich CRM). Colleges increasingly are connecting their VoIP systems to CRM applications. In a typical scenario, the Office of the Registrar can instantly retrieve a student's financial and academic records because the VoIP phone system recognizes the incoming phone number and fetches the appropriate student records from the CRM system.
- Mobile video applications. As colleges increasingly capture lectures and other types of classroom content on video, they will need robust, reliable broadband connections (both wired and wireless) to push that content out to students' mobile devices.
- Video surveillance. Closed-circuit TV has given way to pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras that are typically connected to Ethernet or WiFi networks. Plus, power over Ethernet (POE) standards allow video surveillance cameras to be placed in areas that otherwise don't have access to electric lines.
Truth is, most universities are not that far along with unified communications. According to Cagnazzi, "The mindset of academia runs the gamut of sticking with TDM-based PBXs-- sometimes due to political issues-- on the conservative side, to installing call-processing systems that run off open source applications which, clearly, is not advisable."
Instead of taking the open source path (where service and support levels vary from software project to software project), Cagnazzi recommends unified solutions from companies like Cisco Systems. Other unified product suppliers include Adtran, Avaya, IBM, Microsoft, Nortel, and ShoreTel.
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