Blog Host: Carrie Higbie - Global Network Applications Market Manager, The Siemon Company READ ENTIRE BIO

The book, published by Cisco Press, explains in plain language detailed plans of how to make VoIP run successfully in an enterprise. The authors answer these questions:

• As you make your move to VoIP, how will you know how to make VoIP work and keep it working well?
• What changes will you need to make without disrupting your business?
• How can you show your return on this investment?

Any true ROI and TCO calculation will include productivity figures. You can not accurately provide these figures without some research and certainly some input from others in the company. Consider branch offices and their needs. What are their dialing habits? How do they use the system. How will the training be delivered to employees? Don't think that you can provide a training manual and all employees will read it. There are a lot of people out there that need a little or a lot of spoon feeding. Is it simple enough to use? Does it minimally have the exact same functionalities as what you currently use or will you have to sacrifice and/or provide workarounds? Training is an expensive undertaking when many employees are on the roster.

Who will your employees call for support? If it is you, there had better be some warm fuzzies about the system and its operation before tempers flare. A meeting of the minds between IT and the other departments is definitely the way to go. This is one system that will have an affect on each and every person in your company.
Posted by Carrie Higbie Universal messaging
04 DEC 2004 21:08 EST (02:08, GMT)
Okay, so I affectionately call this "Find me, Torture me," but it is really a neat thing. With a universal mailbox, you can have your voicemails recorded as .wav files and listen to them in your e-mail. You can e-mail voicemail messages, You can reply to e-mail on the phone. You can really do lots of neat things. This technology has been around for a long time, and companies, for whatever reason, have not been really quick to adopt it. In the early days, it was a bit painful listening to the computer-generated voice. You had to listen to all the contents of your message (including the header -- who wants to hear that?!), but the newer versions will tell you who the message is from, and you can skip to the contents or decide to listen to it later. I am told that someone is working to have celebrities provide the voices. Who would you pick?

With new, recently passed legislation making audits on information possession necessary, the instant messaging world may have problems keeping up. It is hard to prove who knows what when without an instant messaging server that will track the messages. Each new audit point and each new server is another place for administration. You really should check out the universal messaging. Next year, maybe they can figure out a way to add collaboration, and we will have one tool for all the cool!
Posted by Carrie Higbie Hidden savings in VoIP
03 DEC 2004 07:06 EST (12:06, GMT)
Okay, so VoIP really made a splash saving companies money when calling site to site. The savings is generally calculated off of toll calls based on telephone bills. But you could be missing some important savings and benefits. To do this calculation properly and to save all you can save, there are a couple of other factors to consider.

First you will want to consider cellular service savings. With the new "soft phones" (software-based phones that turn your PC into a phone), you can route your calls through any number of IP PBX's. How this can be of significant benefit is that you can generate calls from anywhere to the base system(s) and the use them for calls. Cellular service is not cheap anywhere. Multiply the cost by about 200 or 300 traveling sales folks, and those dollars add up quickly. In order to understand the best savings, you need to ask you carrier(s) how your calls are currently routed. For instance, when calling from one country in Latin America to another, the call may actually go from country A to the U.S. and then to country B. Your toll is based on those routings. If a call is 3 cents per minute if it is originated in the U.S. to country B, but calling from country A to country B is 10 cents per minute, with the proper routing you can save the difference of 7 cents per minute.

The next thing to consider is calling cards. These are a great convenience when traveling, but can be pricey for the same reasons, especially the call routing portion. Some companies route all calls through their main locations so that they can pick up the charges for billing purposes. While this is convenient for them, it can be pricey for you. Even if you dial a "local" access number, the call may still be carried via VoIP at their end to their main system for billing. If it saves the carriers money, there is no reason you can't use it to save yourself money.

One more hidden little trick that you may want to explore takes a bit more time. You will need to track work habits of some of your traveling folks as well as those in remote offices. The universal messaging and universal mailboxes have been around for quite some time. This is one of the coolest technologies and also one of the most underutilized. While instant messaging can keep people in touch, most anyone you talk to will also tell you that it hurts production sometimes, because once distracted, it takes some time to get back in your groove. See how often your folks dial in to get voicemail. You will want to look at your toll charges into your voicemail system. Understanding that if you activate universal mailboxes, most of those charges are going to go away as well.
Posted by Carrie Higbie VoIP security
02 DEC 2004 22:23 EST (03:23, GMT)
When implementing VoIP, some companies forget to implement security first. First is important. Just like a PC, any component of a VoIP system is subject to the same attacks. This can include theft of services, denial of service attacks and so on. While companies are becoming more adept at providing these services for their data networks, one must remember that VoIP systems are part of that network. There are several steps that should occur before your system is live. The benefit to doing them first is that you have a period of time to prove the system. When troubleshooting your system, the less places you have to look for problems, the better. If you have remote folks accessing your system, they should only be doing so via a VPN or some other secure method that will allow you to authenticate the traffic.

Also, when you have several internal phones, they should be utilizing NAT. It is a good idea to make sure that snooping devices are not on your network for obvious reasons, but this applies to your voice traffic as well. They can be listened to in real time with the proper device. Some larger companies are finding that intelligent patching provides a better audit trail, as it will report connections to the network in real time, which allows an IT manager or administrator to determine who is plugging into the network in what locations. For your roaming users, you may want to include some sort of biometric or key fob device that randomly assigns passwords, assuring that any stolen laptop will not work in your system.

There are a variety of options for any of these systems. As with any system, verify interoperability between your system and your users to the security appliance or package that you want to integrate. This will assure that you are good to go before you get bit by the unscrupulous folks out there that can cause you to put your resume back out on the street for a new job.
Posted by Carrie Higbie What if my VoIP system doesn't work?
01 DEC 2004 17:57 EST (22:57, GMT)
Oops! You just installed a VoIP system and did a hard cutover (without a phased-in approach), and now it does not work. What next?

There are several factors that could provide you with less-than-perfect performance. In a voice conversation, each data packet carries about 20 milliseconds of a voice conversation. The words spoken are broken into packets that have to be received at the other end so that they can be reassembled and played. If the packets travel on a congested network or they are processed at a lower priority, problems can occur. If a user is experiencing a lot of echo, that is another issue entirely.

Let's take the traffic problem first. There are several ways to handle prioritization of voice. Which method you chose really depends on your active equipment (routers and switches) and your carrier bandwidth. One method is to set your quality of service or diffserve bits to a higher priority that will allow them to be processed first. In order for this to work, all of your switches and routers must speak the same language (pun intended). Make sure that your equipment can understand and process them accordingly. You can also use a bandwidth manager. Packateer is my favorite, but there are several others out there. A bandwidth manager will throttle back the data and process the voice at a higher priority. The new Layer 7 switches (or Layer 4-7 switches, as they are being called) will process at an application layer and provide some assistance. Undersizing your circuits can be another problem. Increasing your bandwidth can help. This last one can be a bit tricky. You really should plan your Erlangs correctly before just increasing your circuit size. That will keep you from having to do it more than once.

Changing your encryption level will also help. The next blog will address echo and its causes.
Posted by Carrie Higbie The IT professional's Thanksgiving
24 NOV 2004 16:10 EST (21:10, GMT)
On a lighter note for Thanksgiving, I thought it would be fun to give some due thanks. Please enjoy. These are from a variety of IT folks. We used to do these in my department when we were eating ourselves into a totally non-productive vacant stare. Here are some of my favorites.

I am thankful that...

• the lying fool I hired who said he was certified (but really just turned out to be certifiable) was discovered before he caused lasting and irreversible damage.

• the OS upgrade did not die at the end so I had to start over the same night that my wife went into labor early.

• we support each other even when we don't know what we are doing.

• we have a boss that has staff meetings at the driving range when we need a break.

• that my spouse understands that this is NOT a 9-5 job.

• the conversion is over and my kids quit calling me "Uncle Daddy.

• you can covert data that your vendor says you can't if you just get a little creative. Rekeying the data would have meant that I wouldn't be here to be thankful for the pot luck!

• people who brought dishes that can't cook had the foresight to buy them

• faster chips, drives and networks get me home earlier than the old days

• the backup that didn't work said so before we needed it!

• there is a company that can recover a lost drive with amazing results. (Actually, that was from the CEO)

• the phone isn't ringing and my pager isn't going off. I hope it stays that way through dessert!

• (and mine...) that as a team there is no project we can't tackle (with a little help sometimes).

• Check the scalability number. If the system really scales to a trillion they ought to have a customer who can state they have a trillion devices running on the system with no problem. There can be a discrepancy between theoretical capacity and actual capacity, and you don't want to find out the what it is when you users are live!

• Do not arbitrarily take a company's ROI numbers. Remember these are all based on averages. Your labor rates, equipment prices and so on will be different in most cases. Do a full and accurate ROI before purchasing any system. This should include knowledge transfer, maintenance, additional personnel, shipping for spare parts, technical support calls, time to apply patches, etc., etc. Check here for an explanation of ROI and TCO and how to really compare apples to apples. And remember -- you are not going to save money on expenses that you don't have. I love that one. You will save one administrator per year. "But Mr. Salesperson, Sir, I only have one!" What is the dumbest thing a salesperson ever told you? E-mail me, and let me know. I will pick the winner for a great prize.

• Ask them to provide a list of the top 25 topics from their customer service help desk. This is the part of knowledge transfer that you will certainly want to pay attention to, but also will help you determine what types of calls and issues there are with the system. Some may state confidentiality, but you can still ask to talk to someone at the help desk and find out the level of calls (expert or novice), average response times and what steps are required for escalation. This one really cracks me up. They train these people on the front lines of the phone to sit there and run you through a routine before they will escalate your problem. How many times should you have to tell a person you already rebooted? I had one tech support call I made with a faulty controller. Just to get the part, I had to do the whole run-through. I told the person on the other end of the phone that it won't reboot, the controller was out and I needed a replacement. They argued with me that I had to reboot. I finally just lied (it was a little fib, give me a break), told her that I rebooted and read her the same error message that was on the screen. Seemingly satisfied she sent me to a higher level tech who told me to reboot again! I called my distributor and ordered another one, then called and complained to get the replacement paid for. You know what, it was easier dealing with the return folks than the technical folks. But I digress!

• Find out how long they have been in business and how solid they are. Every company has ups and downs, but the solid ones survive. Be careful not to evaluate them just on stock price. And don't be surprised of some start ups have some great technology. If they have solid backing, you may get something fantastic for less money. Some startups will even give discounts or other perks like free training for letting you be a test site and reference. Don't be afraid to ask!

• Do not check vendor references. Well, at least the ones that they give you. You are far better off doing a search on press releases to determine who has installed the system lately. Call the IT managers or end user and pick their brains for a bit. You can find out their successes and pitfalls, anything they had to purchase after implementation, the level of support they are getting and so on. Keep in mind that most people will only give you references whom they know will say great things about them. Think outside the norm. It may take a bit longer at the front end, but will save you a bundle on pain relievers!

• Compare the number of patches and upgrades they have released in the last year. This often overlooked little piece of information can save you a world of overtime! Don't forget, that includes operating system packages as well. This adds to your costs and total cost of ownership while it decreases your return on investment numbers.

• Watch the dates on white papers. This one really cracks me up. I have had people quote the oldest white papers, which are so obsolete.

• Make sure you understand what you are evaluating. Don't take one salesperson's word for it. Do a little homework, and make sure they understand what they are selling. Don't be afraid to have them clarify questions or ask to be put in touch with a technical person. If you still disagree, this could be a problem when you know more than your support team.

• See if they developed the technology or purchased it. If they purchased it, how many of the original inventors are still employed? It is common for people to leave after an acquisition. Is there anyone left that is up to speed or will you get stuck waiting for them to get there?

• Is there a local user's group? Many times this is a great way to get workarounds, support and guidance that you would otherwise have to pay for or figure out yourself. This can be a big timesaver!