ISI SOLUTIONS WHITE PAPER Optimizing the Avaya Communications Architecture: Calculating SIP Bandwidth With Infortel Select 9.0 Reporting By: Mitchell Weiss Director of Product Strategy ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. At A Glance: Many of your customers today are using traditional communications architectures a wide variety of individual PBXs and key systems connected individually to the PSTN by a combination of T1 and POTS. As an Avaya distributor, you are likely working hard to move these customers to a new architecture using Avaya Aura. Avaya Aura is the key enabler to let companies move to the new architecture. ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. 1051 Perimeter Dr., Suite 200, Schaumburg, IL 60173 847.706.5018 This document is provided as-is. Information and view expressed in this document may change without notice. 0061R6262012
The Need for a New Communications Architecture Many of your customers today are using traditional communications architectures a wide variety of individual PBXs and key systems connected individually to the PSTN by a combination of T1 and POTS. As an Avaya distributor, you are likely working hard to move these customers to a new architecture using Avaya Aura. Avaya Aura is the key enabler to let companies move to the new architecture. As beneficial as the New Architecture shown above can be, few companies, especially the largest, can move there in one step. Instead, a series of smaller steps will be taken. Steps can include: 1. Connect individual offices to local SIP gateways. 2. Deploy Aura Session Manager in front of existing headquarters and branch telephone systems 3. Route inter-office call on-net over corporate WAN. 4. Start moving to centralized model by eliminating local egress and moving calls to centralized facilities. 5. Finally, eliminate local hardware by moving to a centralized SIP architecture with survivable remote sites. For large enterprises, this can be a multi-year project. This project, however, provides tremendous opportunities in terms of products and services for the Avaya partner. As the trusted advisor, your customers look to you to help in this deployment. Throughout the deployment you and your customers need tools to help engineer each phase of the process. ISI Telemanagement Solutions provides such tools. SIP New Challenges in Traffic Engineering In the past, well worn methods of traffic engineering were used to plan voice networks. Calculations such as Erlang B and Erlang C ruled the day. Since T1s were used, companies typically added circuits in blocks of 24. SIP changes all this. The key metric of SIP traffic engineering is the number of concurrent calls needed. This not only equates to the way the service providers bill for PSTN SIP circuits, it relates directly to bandwidth required. To properly engineer the network at each phase of the deployment, you need to calculate the number of concurrent voice channels needed. These calculations must be made for both on-net and PSTN calling. Many companies simplify this by guessing. For example, if a location had four POTS lines, they simply assume they will need four SIP circuits from their service provider. This can 2
be a costly mistake. It does not take into account: 1. How many actual concurrent calls are required at busy hour? 2. How much of the existing traffic on the PSTN lines will go over the WAN and become on-net traffic? 3. How much actual internet bandwidth will be required? The only way to avoid costly mistakes is to use actual data from a company s actual calling patterns. Rules of Thumb can be costly! Infortel Select from ISI Telemanagement Solutions is the ideal tool to help both the vendor and the company make these calculations. How does Infortel Select Help the Deployment? At each step of the deployment, your customer can use Infortel Select to calculate the key metric of concurrent calls. Using Infortel Select, you can calculate the number of concurrent calls needed in each model and also calculate the bandwidth requirements. Below, we will take you through a case study that illustrates how Infortel Select can be used in this process. Step 1 Deploy SIP Trunking at Each Location Imagine an enterprise with fully decentralized telephony architecture. Each remote has legacy stand-alone systems serviced by T1 or POTS lines. The first step of the evolution is to deploy SIP trunking at each location. Since you have not yet deployed an enterprise MPLS network capable of handling global voice, you are not ready to move towards the next steps. Your project needs to show a quick ROI to be funded. Local SIP trunking is the way to provide the ROI. The question is, however, how do you size the SIP trunks at each location to carry the traffic? Using Infortel Select, you can easily answer this question. Not only can you answer the question, you can provide hard ROI calculations using real traffic patterns. Infortel Select will collect data from each legacy PBX at each location. Then, using our reports specifically tailored to SIP trunking, you can calculate exactly how many SIP trunks to deploy at each location. As you can see in the example below, Infortel Select quickly identifies the number of concurrent calls at each location. Step 2 Deploy Avaya Aura for On-net Calling The next step is to determine the real savings that can be had from deploying a centralized Avaya Aura system for handling interoffice communications. In order to calculate the savings, you need to be able to determine the calling volume between offices. Not only do you need to understand the volume, you need to understand the number of concurrent calls at the busy hour. Once you have this information, you can easily determine the bandwidth required to handle these calls. In this case, you will run a series of reports: 3
1. For each location, calculate the potential on-net outbound calling. This will tell you the outbound concurrent calls from that location. 2. For each location, calculate the number of calls from other locations that will be coming in. This will tell you the number of inbound concurrent calls. 3. For all locations, calculate the number of potential on-net calls. This will let you calculate the total MPLS bandwidth required. Note: Based on the need for 1021 concurrent calls at busy hour, we can easily determine that our total bandwidth will be 25405kbps using a G.729 codec. 1 Step 3 Realize Additional Savings with Global Tail-End-Hop-Off If you are a global enterprise, you can realize additional savings through tail-end-hop-off routing. As with step two, you can use Infortel Select to calculate bandwidth requirements and also actual savings. For example, if you have a remote office in London, you can easily calculate the cost of calling to the United Kingdom from non-uk locations. By sending those costs on-net to the UK office, you can realize significant savings. Step 4 Continue to Optimize Your Infrastructure Even though you may have fully completed your transition to a new architecture, you job is not done. Change is a fact of life in today s business environment. Head-count is increased or decreased on a regular basis and offices are added and eliminated. New acquisitions change things as well. Through all this, calling patterns and volumes continually change. Through continued use of Infortel Select, you can stay on top of the changes to ensure that your voice network is optimized for the best performance at the lowest cost. 1. There are many bandwidth calculators on the net. For example, we used the calculator at http://www.bandcalc.com/ for this calculation. 4
About Infortel Select Infortel Select provides for automated collection of raw call detail records (CDR) from one or many telephone systems, wireless carriers and calling card vendors, enabling consolidated reporting and management of all telecom expenses through a single application. Call processing determines call destination, jurisdiction and accurate cost for each call record according to published tariffs and user- defined preferences. A variety of integrated reporting tools produce and deliver telecom management reports to satisfy each of the traditional call accounting needs: Usage-based allocation of variable and fixed telecommunications expenses Identification of potential abuse or misuse Analysis of employee productivity Analysis of traffic and trunk utilization for troubleshooting and facility planning Investigation of corporate security concerns Permanent and historical archive of call detail records Central to the flexibility of Infortel Select, is its architecture. The Infortel Select solution is comprised of several functional modules that work in concert to deliver desired functionality: Permanent and historical archive of call detail records Control Center Dashboard Users can define their own home page with desired summary gates Directory Maintenance of the extension/user/department database Trunk Administration Maintenance of trunk facility inventory Call Exploration Web browser-based drill-down utility for call investigation Report Designer Publisher Powerful report designer and publisher for creation and dissemination of reports Call Pricing Set-up and maintenance of how calls should be costed Process Scheduler Orchestrates sequence and timing of all applications processes Collection of raw call records from a customer-premise telephone system is accomplished through one of several methods, based upon the type of CDR interface supported by the manufacturer of the telephone system. In the case of a conventional PBX or key system, a buffer box (industry-standard pollable collection device) is connected to the phone system CDR port for local collection. Infortel Select retrieves data from the buffer box on a regularly scheduled basis via a dial-up or IP network connection. In a Voice over IP (VoIP) environment, Infortel Select supports a variety of manufacturer-specific collection methods utilizing IP connectivity through the LAN/WAN. ISI maintains CDR compatibility with all popular telephone systems capable of generating call detail records to ensure that Infortel Select may be used in any telecom environment, even a multi-site environment with a mixture of equipment from various manufacturers. Infortel Select employs very flexible call costing utilities to accommodate virtually any customer objective. One may choose to apply rates from approximately 100 published tariffs representing most local and long distance vendors. Calls may also be costed based upon mark-up or discount of the published tariffs. Infortel Select also supports custom costing that allows creation of a userdefined or negotiated rate plan based upon pricing instructions for each call type. Common to all rate plans are regular rate table updates to ensure that changes or additions to country codes, area codes and exchanges are recognized for accurate resolution of call jurisdiction and destination city/state. Deployment Options Onsite Deployment Infortel Select Onsite Call Accounting configurations utilize a dedicated customer-provided workstation or server platform and 5
customer ownership of the software license. These configurations offer maximum customer control of the call accounting environment, as the customer is responsible for all aspects of product administration. Onsite configurations support real-time processing of call activity. With an on-site deployment, the end-user customer provides all hardware while ISI provides its professional installation and training. Infortel Select on-site deployments are available regardless of the size of your organization ranging from a single location with hundreds of end-points to global organizations with thousands of locations and hundreds of thousands of end-points. Outsourced Deployment Infortel Select Advantage is a comprehensive call accounting solution deployed in a fully outsourced manner. ISI provides any necessary onsite data collection equipment, provides and hosts all data center hardware and software used for polling, processing, secure storage and reporting of call activity. Experienced ISI staff are responsible for most administrative functions including management of data collection, trunk inventory updates, call costing and rate table updates, call processing, server support and data back-up. ISI also assumes primary responsibility for configuration, scheduling, production and distribution of pre-selected scheduled reports. The result is a turnkey call accounting solution with very limited demand on customer resources. Customer access is provided via the Internet using a secure web browser. To supplement the scheduled reports generated and distributed by ISI, authorized end-users may run a variety of ad-hoc reports and search for specific call activity through Infortel Select s two web-based reporting modules: Call Exploration and General Reports. Review and maintenance of the extension/user/ department database may be accomplished through customer access to Infortel Select s Directory database module, or an automated database update process may be created based upon a customer-provided database source. An assigned Customer Account Manager (CAM) assumes responsibility for management of the account from implementation through ongoing monthly reporting. The CAM consults with the customer to understand objectives and preferences, assists the customer in gathering necessary information, configures the account, provides end-user training, checks monthly reports to ensure they are timely and accurate, and serves as the single point of contact for all ongoing support needs. About ISI ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. is a full-service telecom solutions company. We offer software and consulting services that help you manage your costs, improve your productivity and increase your revenue. With our consulting arm for progressive telecom consulting services, we exemplify a 30-year commitment to superior products and services. More than 3,000 customers count on us to offer exceptional customer service and supply the solutions that will help them gain control of their telecommunications spend. ISI s products are used by law firms, accounting firms, universities and other higher education facilities, hospitality properties, government agencies, medical facilities, as well as thousands of commercial companies. ISI has won numerous awards including: For more information on ISI Telemanagement Solutions contact your ISI sales representative or visit us at. 6
DISCLAIMER This document is provided as-is. Information and views expressed in this document, including URL and other Internet Web site references, may change without notice. You bear the risk of using it. Some examples depicted herein are provided for illustration only and are fictitious. No real association or connection is intended or should be inferred. This document does not provide you with any legal rights to any intellectual property in any ISI product. You may copy and use this document for your internal, reference purposes. Copyright 2015 ISI Telemanagement Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. 7