- A Guide to Ensuring a Solid Foundation for Unified Communications
- Gary Audin, Delphi, Inc.
Migration is the movement from one place or condition to another place or condition. Migrating from the TDM PBX to VoIP and IP Telephony (IPT) will not be a one-time, instantaneous process. Rather, it is a continually evolving process that may take place over months and even years. Plans must be made, alternatives considered, best practices followed, facilities prepared, and systems must be procured and installed. Installing VoIP/IPT systems is not a plug-and-play implementation. Proper preparation is essential.
VoIP/IPT migration is a four-stage process:
Each stage has recommended best practices that should be followed. This paper provides a digest of the considerations from existing VoIP/IPT implementations for each of the four stages and presents a checklist of Best Practices. The Best Practices that are part of this paper are divided into the following nine categories:
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VoIP/IPT migration is a four-stage process:
- Assessing and preparing the infrastructure to ensure its readiness to support VoIP and installing the upgrades are mandatory in stage one.
- Setting up a pilot system to acquire experience with this new technology and to compare vendors and resellers (integrators, channels, and partners) is optional but highly recommended.
- Product selection and implementation is another mandatory stage.
- Operation and administration, as well as planning and installing an expanded number of sites and stations, software changes and adding applications is also a mandatory stage.
Each stage has recommended best practices that should be followed. This paper provides a digest of the considerations from existing VoIP/IPT implementations for each of the four stages and presents a checklist of Best Practices. The Best Practices that are part of this paper are divided into the following nine categories:
- Assessing the LAN and WLAN
- Completing the Closet
- Assessing the WAN
- Improving the WAN
- Planning and Testing the Pilot IPT System
- Ensuring Secure Operation
- Organizing for Convergence
- Best Practices During Selection and Deployment
- Best Practices After Deployment
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This is a great, extensive guidebook. As the use of Unified Communications becomes an integral component of your business processes, having a firm foundation in your VoIP implementation is critical.
If you're still in the deployment phase, the "best practices" provide an excellent guide. If you're already partially or even fully deployed, the document is still extremely useful to make sure you have all of your bases appropriately covered.
It's an essential part of your library.