InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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May 14, 2001 |
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Michigan Technical University: Network Convergence
By Candee Wilde
he vice provost of Michigan Technical University in Houghton, Mich., is among the users who began planning early for network convergence. In the mid-1990s, new legislation increased the cost of Centrex services the university had relied on, which made the switch to a PBX economically attractive. At the same time, bandwidth utilization was spiraling on the university's LAN.
"Those two factors drove us to seriously look at the issue of voice, data, and video convergence into a single network infrastructure," says Dr. James Cross. Mitel Communications Systems, a division of Mitel Corp., outlined the voice-over-IP migration strategy it planned to give users who purchased its traditional PBX system. "That led to the installation of a Mitel SX-2000 Light," he says.
Several years later, in mid-1999, Michigan Tech began a pilot in its 48-person IT department using Mitel's first IP PBX, the Ipera 2000, with its existing system. Pleased with those results, the university is now developing plans to add some 1,500 administrative users, a project that will take a year and a half, estimates Brenda Helminen, Michigan Tech's director of network engineering.
Cross says the project will progress in "bite-sized chunks. We are very comfortable with the product we've had in operation for over a year. We feel we can cluster this technology together to support that many users very comfortably." Total dealer list price per user, including an IP phone, digital trunking, networking with the existing PBX, and systems management, is $700 to $900, depending on the number of users.
The 384-port Ipera 2000 is an integrated, single-server Windows NT-based system that provides standard and advanced PBX features such as call control, call-center routing, directory support, and unified messaging. It connects with analog and digital trunks (T1/E1 and ISDN) and supports up to 240 IP users.
Michigan Tech currently runs a 2.5-Gbyte campus backbone, built with networking gear from London technology vendor Marconi Corp. Plans are in place to increase bandwidth to 10 Gbytes. The network supports both Layer 2 and Layer 3 quality-of-service protocols, which the university uses for IP telephony. The university considered alternative IP PBXs, both from traditional and data-side vendors. It chose Mitel's Ipera 2000 because it matched the functionality and reliability of its traditional PBX, and it let the school move to voice over IP in stages, protecting its investment in legacy equipment.
Cross cautions other IP professionals who are considering the switch to voice over IP to be sure that the enterprise network and IP solution they choose are robust enough to deliver the same high-quality voice services that users take for granted from traditional PBX and carrier systems.
"When we pick up the phone on our desk, we expect dial tone and good service every time," Cross says. "It has to be the same in a converged network. You can't overlook this or minimize it during the planning process for voice over IP."
Mitel, underscoring its belief that the role of the telephone is changing now that it can be a programmable IP device, recently introduced a tool that links a PDA to an IP telephone. "By linking the telephone instrument with the PDA, people can dial from a contact list on the PDA," says Kevin Johnson, Mitel's director of product marketing.
If an IP phone in a remote location is equipped with the device, a user could access his or her desktop by linking a PDA to that phone. Says Johnson, "Now that we can layer other applications or technology enablers on top of the telephone, it can do more for users than just processing phone calls."
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