* The regional or "clustered" approach to branch office VoIP
So…IP telephony is installed and humming along at corporate headquarters. Now it’s time to extend the technology to the branch office.
If you haven’t already determined right architecture for branch extension, it’s vital to spend some time thinking about what makes the most sense for your situation.
There is no single “right” way to deploy VoIP to the branches that applies to all organizations. Some of the factors to consider include IT staffing levels and locations, number of remote sites and the chosen IP PBX vendor.
As I wrote last week, the largest percentage of organizations, 40%, use a distributed approach whereby they install an IP PBX at every location. The reason this is most common? The majority of companies using this design are small and midsize organizations – and there simply are more of those than large and global enterprises, which adopt other approaches.
This week, I’ll discuss what method many of the large/global enterprises use. Combining some of the benefits of the centralized and distributed approaches, 35% of organizations have designed their VoIP networks using a regional framework. They install IP telephony switches/PBXs at regional locations, and connect smaller branch locations to the regional sites.
This is the common architecture for Cisco implementations; 69% of the participants who use this approach are Cisco customers, according to Nemertes’ Convergence & Next-Generation WANs benchmark. About 15% set up their Avaya VoIP infrastructure using a regional approach, and 8% each of ShoreTel and Mitel’s customers do the same.
Often, the regional or “clustered” approach dictates how organizations manage the VoIP system, as well. “Regionally centralized groups support the systems. We were able to cut truckrolls by 75% because we could do all voice centrally,” says the CTO of a financial-services company. In the past, the firm paid for a service provider to run an average of eight calls for a branch per year; with the new VoIP infrastructure, they cut those truck rolls to two, saving, on average, $300 per call.
We recommend the regional approach for organizations with numerous locations, many of which are in the same region and can easily leverage a nearby PBX. On the upside, you can staff your IT/telecom organization based on where the major IP PBXs are. And you can reduce the actual number of locations and devices managed, compared to a fully distributed approach.
On the downside, setting up the routing tables for VoIP clusters takes some time and expertise. And, the redundancy – while good – isn’t as good as having an IP PBX at every location.
Next week, we’ll review the benefits of a centralized approach to branch office VoIP.
