VoIP capabilities without rip and replace? Sounds unheard
of. But that's what the Seaport Hotel in Boston wanted when
implementing a new in-room portal that allows guests to access
services such as IP phone calls and other applications.By most accounts, however, the Seaport would have to tear out
its existing TDM PBX infrastructure and replace it with an IP PBX
and IP in-room phones in order to get that VoIP functionality.
According to John Burke, director of technology for the Seaport,
that wasn't going to fly.
The Seaport was looking for a way to enhance the guest
experience in its luxury waterfront hotel. Burke said the hotel
went with an in-room touch-screen flat panel television that is
synced into the hotel's network to deliver such services as
toll-free local and long-distance phone calls, guest services,
video and entertainment, and a host of other amenities, such as
restaurant reservations and travel updates. A main focus of the
project, called the Seaportal, was to add in VoIP-enabled services,
but without the cost of replacing the existing Nortel TDM PBX.
"We looked at IP enabling our phone switch," Burke said. "We
looked at Skype and looked at hosting Asterisk."
Burke said he wanted the solution to have similar functionality
to an IP PBX, while also integrating with the current TDM PBX
infrastructure. He said the hotel wanted to implement VoIP
capabilities into the application using simple Web service
APIs.
"The reason I didn't want to do a whole forklift is, this is
still bleeding-edge technology," Burke said. "I didn't want to rip
out the traditional PBX and replace it with bleeding-edge
technology and have that be our sole PBX system."
Burke said he wanted to keep the traditional PBX on hand to ensure
that guests and hotel staff could safely dial 911 if needed, and
since telephone service is critical in a hotel, he wanted to ensure
maximum reliability. The hotel was able to leverage its existing
PBX by adding in SessionSuite SOA Edition from BlueNote Networks.
The software delivers the services, tools and interfaces to
integrate real-time communication services with a range of software
applications while providing the features, functions and benefits
of a comprehensive enterprise-wide VoIP deployment.
The modular SessionSuite platform delivers voice and video
communications as Web Services in a service-oriented architecture
(SOA), so organizations can add interactive communications to
business processes using standard XML-based SOAP interfaces.
Sally Bament, vice president of marketing, product management,
for BlueNote Networks, said the in-room portal allows guests to
initiate phone calls from the touch-screen. Essentially, they dial
from the touch-screen using a softphone-like dialer. The call is
sent to the Web server, where the portal application sits. From
there, a Web services request is sent to the SessionSuite; the
SessionSuite creates a call between the traditional Nortel PBX and
the Internet cloud to the recipient of the call and connects the
two. The SessionSuite SOA edition also uses the Nortel PBX to
connect the room to the hotel's guest services.
Burke said he can't disclose the exact cost of a rip and
replace, but it would've been roughly four times as much as they
paid for the project and would've taken longer to deploy. The time
frame for the project was tight, and the requirements were a tall
order. "We really need to IP enable this phone switch in a 90-day
time frame," he said.
The goal of the project, Burke added, is to have 100 rooms
enabled by mid-February. The hotel is on track with that goal, and
so far there have been no hiccups.
"If you come to stay with us, you don't need to bring your
laptop," he said, adding that you can get email, attachments and
printing from the touch-screen. There are also USB ports for guests
to pull up documents.