Ten IP telephony management requirements, Part 1

When preparing to manage an IP telephony network, an organization must carefully consider the product’s management capabilities and take steps to assure short-term and long-term success. These steps can be grouped into 10 requirements, this week we’ll look at the first five.

When preparing to manage an IP telephony network, an organization must carefully consider the product’s management capabilities and take steps to assure short-term and long-term success. These steps can be grouped into 10 requirements, this week we’ll look at the first five.

1. Part of any business decision to deploy IPT must include a full network assessment of voice requirements and data network capability. A mismatch between data network capacity and voice system requirements will assure failure; a properly planned data network infrastructure will be critical to success.

2. Once deployed, ongoing IPT system monitoring is required. IPT management systems should be capable of monitoring every call as it happens in real time, and be capable of automatically reconfiguring voice call routes and devices that do not meet pre-established QoS metrics.

3. Although monitoring all the technical QoS elements is important, network operators must always remember the most important aspect – the end user. Deployment plans, operations, and support tools should be included to provide proactive support from the user’s perspective.

4. IPT systems must include management capabilities for computing device management – applying the same rigor to computing hardware management that is applied to traditional phone system equipment. Just as the PSTN has failover capabilities for power, transmission, and signaling, so too must the successful IPT system include design and management tools that provide fault-tolerance, real-time corrective action, and integrated computing device management.

5. IPT management systems should provide for software version monitoring and control across multiple programs – especially the IPT application and the operating system software. More advanced management systems will also include the capability to provide synthetic transactional analysis for pre-deployment assessments and for post-deployment optimization.

Next time, we’ll look at the remaining requirements.