Companies looking to get more "bang for the buck" from
their VoIP implementation should use it to bolster their disaster
recovery plans. VoIP needs to be at the core of any well-planned
communications recovery strategy.
Whenever I speak about VoIP with current or potential deployers
of the technology, we normally discuss potential cost savings,
unified communications and how to measure productivity gains.
However, one thing that does not get brought up often enough is how
corporations can use VoIP as a way to ensure continuous
communications in the event of a disaster.
Most people that haven't actually been through a disaster tend
to only think about the ones that gain national attention, such as
hurricane Katrina, the Avian flu, the terror attacks of 9/11 or the
recent Cartoon Network media prank in Boston that slowed the city
down for several hours. However, the majority of disasters happen
with very little fan fare, but can be just as disruptive. I know of
a recent example that involved an accident with a chemical truck in
front of the building of a company I was working with. No one was
allowed to pass the quarantined area. For this company, it meant
that no one was able to physically get into their building, even
though there was nothing wrong with the facility.
Planning for disasters the old PSTN way was very difficult and
very expensive. Typically, this meant extra trunk lines and phone
systems and normally involved the help of a telco to redirect calls
from one location to another. There was no low cost way of getting
telephony to a backup site and it was virtually impossible to
recreate the office experience at home.
 | | | | | Planning for disasters the old
PSTN way was very difficult and expensive. VoIP needs to be at the
core of any well-planned communications recovery
strategy.
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However, because VoIP works at layer 3 (hence the IP in VoIP),
it looks and acts just like any other IP-based application. Take
email as an example. The user, no matter where he or she is, need
not worry about the actual location of the mail server. The user
plugs into an Internet connection, fires up the VPN client and just
like magic, email works. There's actually no magic about it, that's
the way IP is supposed to work. The same thing can be done for
telephony if IP is being used. Anywhere there is an Internet
connection, there can be corporate telephony.
There's also a variety of ways to access that telephone system.
One fairly common way for users to recreate that "in-office"
experience and have access to four digit dialing, corporate
voicemail, and so on, is to use a softphone. This is a
software-based phone lives on your desktop, and when active, takes
the place of the phone on your desk. Many softphones actually look
like a picture of the desk phone (this bugs me, but that's another
column) making it even easier for non-technical users. Almost every
major telephony vendors offers a robust softphone and it will be a
standard part of Microsoft's unified communications suite.
For more traditional users that prefer a physical phone, they
can plug a USB handset into a laptop or PC and have that act as the
phone, but it probably wont have the same features and functions of
an office phone. However, it can interoperate with the PC or
laptop-based softphones.
Additionally, for users that want the same look and feel as what
they would get in the office, more and more vendors offer
"telecommuter" or "VPN" phones. Mitel has offered one for years.
I've actually used Mitel's phone and, once preconfigured by the IT
department, it sets up in about 10 seconds at home and acts exactly
the same way as the phone at the office. Recently Avaya and other
vendors have released VPN phones and I expect all major vendors to
eventually have one.
One last thing to consider, although this most likely falls
outside the governance of corporate IT, is the use of Skype and
instant messenger-based VoIP. I'm a big fan of Skype. I use it all
the time and even have one of Cisco's Linksys Skype phones at home,
so I don't always have to use my PC. It's a great way to create my
own community of people I network with both at my company and
people at other companies that I deal with on a regular basis.
So, if you're considering VoIP or have deployed it already think
about the following:
- Mandate users work from home at least once a quarter.
This will get them used to using things like softphones, IM and VPN
phones. If you don't have the authority to mandate users, work with
the business units. It's in the company's best interest and helps
provide the important comfort factor in the event of a
disaster.
- Consider hosted VoIP services for small locations and
telecommuters.There are plenty of hosted voice services today
and you might get better economies of scale from a service.
- Investigate consumer technologies Consumer technologies
can augment what you do with your corporate telephony. Skype and
public instant messenger are great "ad hoc" tools.
- Look at ways to integrate the mobile phone into the
corporate telephony environment. Features like Avaya's EC500
make it relatively simple to integrate. Companies such as DiVitas
can actually mobilize voice and many of your other corporate
applications as well.
About the author
Zeus Kerravala manages Yankee Group's infrastructure research
and consulting. His areas of expertise involve working with
customers to solve their business issues through the deployment of
infrastructure technology solutions, including switching, routing,
network management, voice solutions and VPNs.
Before joining Yankee Group, Kerravala was a senior engineer
and technical project manager for Greenwich Technology Partners, a
leading network infrastructure and engineering consulting firm.
Prior to that, he was a vice president of IT for Ferris, Baker
Watts, a mid-Atlantic based brokerage firm, acting as both a lead
engineer and project manager deploying corporate-wide technical
solutions to support the firm's business units. Kerravala's first
task at FBW was to roll out a new frame relay infrastructure with
connections to branch offices, service providers, vendors and the
stock exchange. Kerravala was also an engineer and technical
project manager for Alex. Brown & Sons, responsible for the
technology related to the equity trading desks.
Kerravala obtained a B.S. degree in physics and mathematics
from the University of Victoria (Canada). He is also certified by
Citrix and NetScout.