Continuing on last week’s theme of addressing underlying UC support requirements, this week we’ll look at approaches for successfully managing UC implementations.
Managing UC isn’t quite the same as managing other applications. As a network engineer my job was always to test the network and figure out if I could point the finger elsewhere. When someone called to complain about application performance I would look at things like latency, congestion, dropped packets, pings, and so on in an effort to rule out the network. Once I determined that the network wasn’t at fault (despite the near universal belief that “the network is slow”), I would refer the ticket to those responsible for application and server management for follow up.
UC changes that paradigm in two ways – first is that those responsible for the network are often the “same” people responsible for supporting UC applications, so there is nowhere else to point the finger. Secondly, effective UC support requires end-to-end visibility into application performance, as well as interconnections between applications. This allows IT managers to answer both “the call was choppy or had echo” type questions as well as “why doesn’t my presence status change when I’m on the phone?” problems.
Effective UC management requires tools that provide adequate visibility. In many cases, engineers still rely on packet capture and manual examination of flows to determine problems, a long and arduous task that requires technicians to possesses not only a solid understanding of SIP message flows, but also vendor proprietary extensions to SIP. In some cases, engineers may need to understand proprietary protocols as well.
To address these concerns, many companies turn to Managed Service Providers (MSPs) to assist with developing a management strategy—as well as assisting with implementation. More than half of IT leaders say UC-professional services are vitally important. Similar to VOIP, many factors influence the level of interest in professional services and which services are required, including the number of trained IT staff and the complexity of the products they’re deploying.
Key requirements for a successful management strategy include:
• Make sure you or the MSP have administrative tools assisting the implementation from Day 0.
• Conduct a pre-deployment test. Run simulated traffic prior to implementation to ensure the WAN is properly sized to handle new real-time applications. You may need to add more bandwidth, for example or adjust application optimization settings.
• Validate that the LAN has Power Over Ethernet, and that LAN switches will are appropriate for the functions of the UC applications you plan to deploy.
• Consider Application Delivery Optimization tools to help improve performance of applications by reducing latency and compressing traffic.
• Consider codecs such as ITU G.722 and G.729 to reduce bandwidth requirements
• Manage what you have. Make sure you have tools in place for asset management
• Simplify provisioning. Consider tools that will assist with automated account/voicemail/unified-messaging provisioning using a consistent employee directory.
• Discuss with the WAN team how to best leverage Class of Service/Quality of Service with each real-time and non-real-time application to achieve predictable performance on all applications. Implement call admission control as appropriate
• Test, test, test and then test some more
• Define clear troubleshooting processes including what to test for particular kinds of trouble (dropped calls, static, echo, fast-busy, etc.), escalation procedures, and so on.
• Manage trouble tickets and conduct analysis to determine most frequent problems and mean time to repair (MTTR), focus on addressing each of these metrics to improve overall performance.
In our research we find that cost savings is the key driver for implementing UC, but performance is the key metric for judging success. Don’t let your implementation fail by not properly addressing management concerns up front, as well as post-implementation.
