As IP telephony becomes increasingly common in the enterprise,
companies struggle to determine exactly who will manage their VoIP
systems. Traditionally, voice staff has been separate from the IT
department staff which manages data networking; converging voice
and data onto one IP network requires a parallel staffing
convergence, which proves challenging to organisations unprepared
to share resources in this brave new world. Despite the fact that
converged networks may simplify support structures and staffing,
the transition can cause some pain.
The pain of convergence
Mary Allan, manager of telecommunications technologies at Black
& Decker, has firsthand experience with the challenge of
converging voice and data networks. She has been a key element in
guiding the company in its IP telephony deployment.
The biggest challenge has been getting data staff to "respect
the unique requirements voice holds," Allan said. She also found it
challenging to understand data networking from the voice side,
which could be as much a cultural issue as anything else.
"Gearheads like simple requests, updates, answers, whereas voice
people tend to be more narrative," she said. "Voice people also
tend to panic faster, and when coupled with the fear of the unknown
data world, can create [a] tense situation where there doesn't need
to be one."
Ken Agress of PlanNet Consulting said organisations make two big
mistakes: They allow too much of the voice talent to "walk out the
door -- or even push them out" and they ignore the problems of
staff integration until late in the process.
Agress said these mistakes may be related to the idea that
converged networks are easier to support. He stressed that
converged networks are only guaranteed to be easier to support when
they are deployed with a focused effort on a wide range of issues.
He said that the "people" issues "get lost in the discussion of
vendors, technologies, architectures and deployments."
Learning the 'other' side
According to Agress, it may be easier for voice staff to learn
about data networking than vice versa -- mainly because of
management issues.
"Often, it's the data management that ends up responsible for
the converged environment," he said. "That may result in them using
kid gloves for the former voice employees, recognising that they're
in a new environment and will require time to grow into their new
roles and responsibilities."
Agress pointed out that the data employees might not be given as
much time to grow into their new role, either because data managers
might underestimate the complexities of voice communications or
because they might be overconfident about their staff's abilities
to deliver a new technology.
Gary Audin, president of Delphi Inc., a consulting and analysis
firm that frequently consults on VoIP implementation, said that to
achieve true staffing convergence, employees must be cross-trained
in voice applications, infrastructure and applications.
"You're going to have to train voice people on software issues
such as patching and upgrades," Audin said. He explained that while
the "IT side" can install and maintain patches, the "voice side"
has to decide whether those patches are worthy of being installed
in the first place.
Allan said that voice professionals have an inherent fear of the
data world. "Part of that may be related to how closed-door the
whole thing is," she said, adding that voice staff traditionally
deal with end users and customers on a daily basis, whereas network
or data staff rarely need to interface with end users.
"Coupled with that is the terminology," Allan said. "Voice
people know what a switch is in the TDM world but have to abandon
that definition when talking in the IPT arena, where a switch is a
completely different piece of hardware."
To help build her knowledge of IP telephony, Allan took
advantage of publications such as Business Communication
Review and The Voice Report, and conferences such as
VoiceCom, IPComm and the Avaya Users Group. She has also taken
classes and is currently pursuing a CCNA -- just to get a better
understanding of the network infrastructure.
Allan also said that she communicates frequently with the
network team. "As simple as that sounds, I think a lot of voice
people don't reach out to the other side," she said. "If I'm
sitting in a meeting and hear an acronym I don't understand, I
speak up. If I try to act like I know, it will come back to bite me
later when I have to act on it."
Planning for integration success
To successfully get voice and data on the same page -- and the
same IP network -- Agress recommends getting involvement from both
voice and data staff very early in the planning process.
"As you define features, evaluate solutions and discuss options
with manufacturers," he said, "the two teams will gain more and
more of an understanding of where each is coming from and [by the
nature of the work] the way that each group approaches issues."
This communication, Agress believes, helps the two groups work
together more effectively and understand each other.
Agress said he also suspects that most organisations could
benefit from re-engineering their business processes in concert
with their IP telephony implementations.
However, "That's frequently a much larger effort and engagement
that many organisations might be unable to allocate funding for,"
Agress said. Still, he felt that making process changes -- even
those focusing on the support side of the organisation -- would be
essential to getting the most out of the new system.
Allan believes voice managers could benefit from copying the
rigidity of the network team when it comes to upgrades. "The
network team has a very formal structure for upgrading their gear
and roll out those upgrades on a scheduled basis," she said. "The
voice world has always been more reactive; we upgrade something
based on a new application or feature request." Regular upgrades
and patches, she said, would help bridge the infrastructure of data
and voice. @28503
"My personal goal would be to couple upgrades with the data gear
to upgrades with the voice gear so that new patches, revs, etc. can
be common across all platforms and tested in the lab against the
switch/router upgrades that are also happening," Allan said. "This
will be a tough challenge for us because of the different business
units Black & Decker has."
She explained that from a data perspective, each business unit
is told when the upgrades will occur; they have very little say in
preventing that from happening. That's not true in the voice
world.
"In order to accomplish this goal, we would have to change the
financial model, having the invoices come into the corporate team
-- as the data invoices do today -- and then charged back to the
business unit/site," Allan said. "Corporate Voice has to centralise
the accounting, etc. ... before we mandate a standard roll-out
policy. I think the more IP telephony deployments we do, the easier
this could become, as the technology will look/feel similar to the
network architecture."