Converged Networks
Datapoint provides a full range of converged network services. This covers the whole lifecycle from auditing, designing, piloting, optimising and upgrading to ongoing network monitoring and support. We evolve traditional voice and data networks into converged ones that are enabled to manage data and real time, multi media traffic in call centre and unified communication deployments.
These can include wired, wireless networks including LANs, WANs, DSL and MPLS provision. They can scale from regional to international scope across any type of TDM, VoIP or SIP carrier. They are built with security, business continuity and quality of service (QOS) as being the prime considerations of an effective solution.
The typical roadmap that organisations take in their migration to a converged network begins with the bringing together of LAN and WAN networks into a single MPLS ecosystem. MPLS (multi protocol label switching) is a way of delivering Quality of Service(QOS) in virtual private networks (VPNs). This sets a foundation capability for managing IP traffic within the organisation’s internal networks and then translating between IP and TDM traffic as it traverses carriers’ PSTN networks.
Phase One Deployments
More often that not, these networks are piloted in certain parts of the organisation in order to achieve a reduction in network management and intra site call costs. Multi sited call centres have been early candidates for this and the goal of providing centralised management of the infrastructure and applications by virtualising them has proved effective and popular.
Many also take the opportunity to set up single telephony platforms that are then positioned to absorb multi channel traffic into unified routing and queuing and reduce the cost and complexity of network based numbering plans in the process.
Extending Converged Network Services
Second phase initiatives may include the integration of remote sites or branch networks into the converged network so that a broader range of communication and business services can be made available. The ‘build once, deploy anywhere’, design template enables rapid and cost effective deployment once the basic model of a centrally managed network is established.
This can lead to new ways of delivering customer service. For instance retail branch networks can deploy local call centre capability to augment existing site capacity and benefit from local recruitment opportunities.
Other candidates for next phase deployments can be mobility and home workers. This involves not only application issues such unified access and unified messaging but also the integration of call routing from mobile devices into the corporate communications infrastructure in order to benefit from least cost routing plans.
At each stage of development, the design and deployment of network capability has to be carefully audited, designed, tested and optimised as the overall complexity and demands on the converged network grows.
Network Requirements For Unified Communications
Unified Communications puts the greatest demand on the underlying network in terms of expecting it to be able to accommodate the growth in traffic that instant messaging and audio/web conferencing will stimulate. Video traffic of course pushes that requirement even higher.
SIP and presence management which provide the ‘social cohesion’ for making unified communication an inviting end user experience also demand transparency and guaranteed delivery of real time communication.
The associate network design that has to keep pace with this is not just concerned with increased bandwidth provision. Open standards based devices that often carry their own ‘intelligence’ provide plenty of security risks as do the more obvious external threats to IP based networks.
Inter operability between VoIP and unified communication vendors is another crucial design consideration and knowledge of their SIPconnect status and roadmap intentions for helping customers built multi vendor communication environments is another pre requisite of an informed network partner.
The quality of network design is therefore crucial in devising a strategy that strikes the right balance between security and openness. The way in which issues such as business continuity and network monitoring are handled have direct bearing on the robustness of the converged network to withstand security threats
SIP Trunking
Once it is more broadly provided by carriers, SIP trunking will also have to be factored into converged network design and deployment as it will provide further opportunity to reduce PSTN access costs by eliminating costly PRI connections to local service providers with a single IP trunk.
Secondly organisations will be able to potentially eliminate both capital and support costs of PSTN gateways by moving them into the service provider network.
Thirdly, organisations will be able to leverage value added services such as the ability to create virtual local numbers in remote regions, have added control over inbound call routing, including leveraging such features as call routing based on time-of-day or call volumes, find-me-follow-me type services to enable call forwarding to mobile phones, and the ability to use SIP trunking services as part of a disaster recovery plan to enable rapid reconfiguration of in-bound calling rules in the event of a major outage.
However this again needs careful design to mitigate the potential security threats in enabling a direct IP link between an enterprise telephony system and a service provider’s network. Issues of session-border-control and VOIP firewalls will need to be considered in these network designs.
Datapoint and its network partners have extensive experience in designing, provisioning and supporting converged networks.
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