Technical Addendum on Telephone Strategies

Transcription

1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Technical Addendum on Telephone Strategies Each LSU system campus uses an Avaya telephone system exclusively (a.k.a. PBX Private Branch exchange) with the exception of LSUHSC New Orleans (HSC is using Avaya, Nortel, and Centrex - leased dial tone) and LSU AgCenter s remote field offices (Centrex, Shoretel, and a variety of PBX s). The current telephony environment on the LSU campuses is not taking advantage of a unified system that could gain more discounts with Avaya as well as offer the campuses some business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities. This addendum discusses some of the technical issues surrounding the unification of telephone systems. RECOMMENDATION: Louisiana State University should consider unifying the Avaya telephone systems and replacing the Centrex services at LSUHSC New Orleans and LSU AgCenter field offices with Avaya. Unifying the systems will take advantage of deeper discounts with Avaya in the long-term, and provide some business continuity/disaster recovery capabilities for all campuses. Requirements to Implement Adequate funding will be needed to upgrade all systems to allow the unification. Appropriate project management will be needed to oversee the migration. Each campus would need to determine the feature set codes to use. Specifically, the campuses would need to agree on which access codes would be used for common features (e.g. call pickup). The campuses would need to agree on a common dial plan LSUHSC-New Orleans is assigned non-contiguous Centrex numbers in five different exchanges. Therefore, the dial plan would have to be at least seven digits. All campuses must have adequate bandwidth to LONI. LONI should be able to guarantee a minimum SLA. A consolidated call accounting system will need to be implemented. Wiring for all campuses involved must be adequate and owned by the campuses. Each campus must maintain enough personnel to help implement and maintain systems as is currently the case today. Adequate life cycle funding to cover maintenance and software upgrades will need to be available to all campuses either through a central fund or a chargeback model. For campuses that would be deploying VoIP to the desktop, PoE switches (with UPS backup) will be needed in network closets. Otherwise, power bricks at the desktop will be required. Another alternative is to install gateways and deploy TDM phones to the desktop thereby bypassing the requirement of PoE switches and bricks. In most cases, appropriate telecommunications closet space is already provided. However, there are some locations where appropriate conditioned space will need to be dedicated for equipment and wiring boards. All systems will need to be at the same software release (which would happen as part of this project). Adequate Avaya training may need to be provided for each campus. Financial Summary Based on a survey by an Avaya reseller, a plan to upgrade all campus systems and install appropriate equipment will cost approximately $2.5-million to $3.5-million. Appropriate project management and software configuration will cost approximately $400,000. Avaya software support and upgrade services will cost approximately $500,000 per year. Additional funds will be needed to address bandwidth issues and wiring at some campuses. The costs presented here are likely to change over the course of the next year. Rationale Cost: By unifying these systems, Louisiana State University will be able to take advantage of volume buying with regard to equipment, licenses, and maintenance. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity: This design ensures all remote sites have several layers of redundancy. If a remote site loses connectivity to the Core, it will try to connect to the ESS at the LSUHSC-Shreveport. If it cannot connect to the LSU ESS, the remote site will survive on its own. If one of the sites suffers a major outage that will keep them off line then 1

2 calls can be re-routed to another location where the calls can be answered during the outage. Avaya recently completed a similar project for the National Guard allowing for this feature in the event coastal offices go off line during hurricanes. Unified features/functionality: Another benefit of unifying the telephone systems is that all locations can have the same features and functionality (this may or may not be desirable). One example of this benefit is the ACD and CMS functionality that resides on the Core can be shared with the entire enterprise without having to duplicate the hardware at each location. Cross Training/Backup Support: With a unified system, the campuses will have the option to assist each other during times of need which could include emergencies, personnel on vacation, and any other times when there is a shortage of personnel and assistance is needed. However, it will be critical that each campus continue to maintain current support personnel for daily business operation. Overall Design Concept LSU A&M will become the Core for the LSU System voice network. All dial tone will source from the Core. LSUHSC-Shreveport will host the Enterprise Survivable Server (ESS) for the voice network. If connectivity from the LSU A&M campus is lost to any of the remote sites, the remote sites will automatically connect with LSUHSC-Shreveport. Survivable remotes will be established at all other locations along with local trunk capacity. LSU Ag Center field offices will be configured with appropriately sized telephone systems with survivable remotes. If a remote cannot connect to either the Core or the ESS, each will survive on its own until connectivity is restored. All of the existing voice mail systems have been left in place in order to provide voic for the local users. Session Managers will be installed in these locations so that voic will continue to function if connectivity is lost to the Core or the ESS. It is possible to establish a common dialing plan. However, dial plans at campuses will be impacted in a significant way. Feature access codes will likely change on some, if not all, of the campuses. For example, Call Pickup may be activated on one campus by using *7 while on another campus *2 is used. These conflicts will need to be resolved as only one set of feature access codes can exist. Campuses have differences in maintenance requirements. Some campuses are self-maintained while others do not have enough personnel to do so and depend on Avaya. The quotes provided only account for Software Support and Upgrades. Design by location LSU A&M: Upgrade all of the Right-to Use (RTU) licenses at the remote locations to CM6. Merge them to the A&M system. LSUHSC-Shreveport: Upgrade and merge the existing station licenses. This location is a center stage switch today. Change the center stage switch to an IP connect switch. Add a session manager and a system manager. The system manager will be a cold standby in case the connectivity to Baton Rouge is lost. Upgrade the call center license to CM6 Elite. Add 126 CMS agent licenses that will be added to the Baton Rouge location. Add ten Supervisor licenses. Use the existing voice mail system. LSU-Shreveport: Upgrade and merge the software into the Baton Rouge Core. Add two servers - one for session manager and one for local survivability. Continue to use the existing voice mail system. LSU-Alexandria: Reuse all the equipment that exists today. Add a Medpro board. Add a session manager server to keep the modular messaging system in operation in case connectivity to Baton Rouge is lost. Add a survivable server. LSU-Eunice: Utilize the existing equipment. Add 250 seats of modular messaging to LSU A&M modular messaging to replace CMM messaging. LSUHSC-New Orleans Dental School: Remove the Intuity voice mail system. Add the 500 voic users to the Aura Messaging System in New Orleans. Reuse the remaining equipment. Move the 25 CMS users to the Baton Rouge CMS by using LSU BR spare CMS license. Pennington Biomedical: Use the existing equipment at this location. Add a session manager so the SIP-connected Modular Messaging will continue to work if connectivity is lost. LSU AgCenter: Initially replace the current legacy PBX and Shoretel telephony systems at 25 research and Extension facilities. Also for future consideration, the replacement of telephone systems at 64 parish Extension 2

3 offices. Each location will require remote survivability and local voice mail. An increase in bandwidth will be needed at many of these field offices. LSUHSC New Orleans (including the School of Nursing): This design includes the displacement of the existing Nortel at the School of Nursing with a Simplex DL360 Survivable Core and G450 gateway. This design also includes the addition of the 10 locations of the Health Science Center Campus (includes School of Nursing) as remote off the A&M Core that will replace existing Centrex service. The Resource Center will house a simplex DL360 Survivable Core along with trunking and Avaya Aura Messaging (w/1550 mailboxes) to serve this campus (except the School of Nursing) in the event of a loss of connectivity to the core. The AAM will be integrated to the core via Session Manager (SM) SIP trunks with the SM located at the Resource Center for survivability. There are IP phone users and 300 analog ports spread evenly across 9 locations. This design requires a total of 2215 User licenses can be reused from the Nortel System - so 1899 CMEE licenses are required to support all of these users. These 1899 licenses will be un-parked from the CM 3 licenses and added to the BR core. 3

4 Diagrams of Campus Equipment Implementations Diagrams depicting the equipment setup at each location are shown below. Diagram showing the LSU A&M campus as the Core and LSUHSC-Shreveport with the ESS configuration 4

5 LSU-Shreveport, LSU-Alexandria, and LSU-Eunice equipment configurations LSUHSC-New Orleans configurations 5

6 Pennington equipment configuration. Challenges Funding: Funding this size of a project will require a large investment. Although the payoff will not be quick, the long term benefits (cost savings, disaster recovery, and business continuity) would justify a move to unify the systems as well as the goal of a single, statewide globally competitive LSU. Wiring: The campus at LSUHSC New Orleans has some specific challenges with regard to wiring in several buildings. These issues will need to be resolved (at an additional cost) at some point. It is possible to begin this project with campuses and buildings that are ready and bring along other buildings as funding permits. Bandwidth: As mentioned previously, LSU - Shreveport, LSU - Alexandria, and LSU - Eunice are not connected directly to LONI but instead are connected via leased lines from ATT or Centurylink (100 Mbps). The leased circuits are bottlenecks and present challenges to ensuring voice quality communications among these campuses. Maintenance: Some campuses require full maintenance coverage on the Avaya system due to a lack of enough personnel to self-maintain the system. Some campuses are self-maintainers. Some campuses will need to continue this full coverage, and may require additional funds. Dial Plan: A dial plan will need to be agreed upon by the campuses. This could be disruptive to the point of requiring a change in telephone numbers. Feature Access Code Changes: Similar to a dial plan change, feature access codes will need to be unified and will likely need to be changed on some campuses. Going Forward This report is only concerned with the technical aspects of engineering a unified telephone environment. Every campus will need to determine specifics of how each operation would be affected by the unification effort. There are many details to work out. This proposed design is only one of several possibilities, but in the interest of time this particular one is being presented. In the end, a unified system will provide discounts and disaster recovery/business continuity enjoyed by other universities similar to Louisiana State University. 6