Unified Communications with Microsoft

And the President said, Let there be Voice: and there was Voice.
Indeed. The much needed Enterprise Voice… for many reasons. Extraordinary savings, complete integration with our existing services, new, unseen before features and… the age’s old question – “Can I do it.” Don’t get me wrong, the latter is strictly personal. As a Professional, I will never jeopardize my Institution’s operations just to see what I am made of.

Implementing VoIP is not an easy task. There are many factors to be considered – from pure technical details to, yes, the “psychology of change”. Do you remember when I said “Beware what you wish” in my first post? Although I have been testing OCS EV for almost 18 months and had 100% confidence in my ability to pull this in GMC, I underestimated the ability of our users to fight “change in the work place” with any means. Can’t blame them, though – when a three star General (our President) say “I want it and I want it now”, my military training kicks in, the “common sense” receives “Shut up and do it” command and… Let me explain:

First – why I talk singular. GMC have five major locations, two extensions office and five offices in military bases throughout the State of Georgia. Total of 1,300 computers, 500 FT users, 4,000 – 6,000 students – all this maintained with 9 (nine) IT folks. I am responsible for the entire network and all servers (all 60 of them). Because of this, I take my role in the Institution VERY seriously since there are no “shared” responsibilities and so, “I” is the expression of pride and curse in the same time.

Second, the deployment was completed in 45 days. Now, this might look a lot of time and yet, it was quite not enough in terms of working with the users to explain the upcoming changes and mainly, to setup the new service as close as possible in order to mimic their current work flow while greatly enhancing it. Even though the Management realized the benefits of the migration, some of our end-users (still) see it as “twisting hands”… Can’t make everybody happy…

Why Microsoft (new in VoIP market), and not Cisco, Nortel, Away or anyone else…

Earlier this year I threw a party in IT office when the last Linux server died. RIP, my archenemy! No more Google to find THIS one singe command for THIS one version you were on. My concept how GMC network should be run finally become reality.

If you are Educational Institution, K12 or High Ed, look at your environment. How many business or else applications you see that were meant to be run on Linux? Or MAC? When was the last time an online student application was developed for Mozilla or Safari first, then tweaked to work with Internet Explorer, or it was the other way around? Or your college application or anything else for that matter… Can someone PLEASE show me a school book that starts with “Make sure you login as ROOT…” or “Start you iTunes and make sure you set your status to show the song you are listening at the moment before you proceed further…” How many times you were tricked by your IT people to “put this on Linux – it is free and I know it”? Make no mistake – this is part of the “job security” conspiracy. I am sure this will piss a lot of people out there, but it is time to “think reality”.

So, let see – I have 1,300 computers in seven campuses all over the state of Georgia. Because of AD DS, I control every aspect of the environment behavior. Software installation and updates, group policy management, email, you name it. All, except… voice. So, what would be the logical choice for implementing voice solution in our College? Hmm, why I don’t we spend (taxpayers) money for third party VoIP solution – we will be completely dependent of their integrators, support, software updates, proprietary servers, with extraordinary yearly support fees, but… who cares – ain’t my money anyway. Well, I do! Georgia Military College is a “semi” State agency – only 20% of our budget comes from the State and our business model is entirely market oriented. You can’t spend what you don’t have (unless you are Democrat in the Congress, of course) and increasing efficiency while lowering cost is our mantra. Amen to that!

We already have Campus Agreement with Microsoft – the sweetest deal one can get out there. Oh wait, Office Communications Server enterprise CAL is included – the one for the voice part of OCS. This means I can not only integrate presence and chat, but the entire Unified communications concept in my environment while spending just a fraction of the cost other vice I would with third party? All I have to do is to deploy few servers, change the phones, setup a SIP Trunk and actually cut my cost for phone service 80% while introduce features my users never dreamed of…

SIP Trunking that is…

Let’s analyze the options for a feature VoIP deployment. We have three basic starting points:

• A small to medium business which currently have POTS as telephony solution (large enterprises are “large” partially because they have seen the light well back in the time and are VoIP already)
• Enterprises that already have local PBX (VoIP or PSTN)
• Any size business that have hosted VoIP

Georgia Military College failed in the first category – each endpoint directly connected to a Centrex PBX, served by the local phone company. The service, however, was “provided” by the GTA (Georgia Technology Authority – a State agency created with the idea to negotiate the best rate/services with the local Phone Providers and provide high quality services… Really?!?). So, we had a service charge of $23.60 per line, and that is – for the simpler service one can imagine, very close to what Alexander Bell invented. Want Caller ID – no problem, add $14,60 to the service charges – you get my point. Our IT office had 4 lines/numbers which rand on 10 phones simultaneously. Great productivity environment, right? Anyway, it was a “saver” – 10 phones and only 4 lines charged ($94.60). This year, however, the State of Georgia awarded the contract to AT&T, which in return immediately announced “price reduction from $23.60 to $16.00” just… now would be per ENDPOINT. So, the new MRC for the IT office would be… $160.00. Wow!!!

Let’s dissect this. We have NPA.NXX.XXXX where NPA are the area codes, NXX are the Exchange codes (remember, PBX = Private Branch Exchange) and finally XXXX which is the local number within the local Exchange. So, the number 478-445-4705 translates to Area Code = 478, Exchange Code 445 (a PBX located in the office of WindStream in Milledgeville, GA) and extension = 2705 (terminated on mine (and 9 others) desks. When I call 478-225-2706 (another former GMC number), what actually happens is my call gets to the PBX (WindStream office) where a match is found, a digital relay is closed and the copper pair that goes in to my phone is connected to the copper pair that ends in to another phone in the office next to ours. Well, it is a little more complicated than this but… you get the picture. So, we are paying for the ability to connect one termination point to another (even if they are few feet apart).

Now look the tricky part. XXXX equals to 10,000 (the maximum numbers of extensions) i.e. 0000 to 9999. A call within the range is “local” i.e. never leaves the PBX. Because it is internal, there is no problem since the PBX was designed with THIS capacity i.e. 5,000 users on one end of town pick up the phone and call the other 5,000 located in the other part of town. So far, so good.

Let’s look what happens when I dial OUTSIDE my local exchange. WindStream (in Milledgeville) holds the following NPA.NXX: 478 414; 445; 451; 454; 456; 457; 804 i.e. when I dial 478-452-XXXX, the local Exchange (still within WindStream’s infrastructure) will find the matching pair and connects me. Now, if you think WindStream have10,000 copper pairs between each PBX in order to cover (the alleged demand) i.e. all 10,000 users of 478.445.XXXX will dial all 10,000 users of 478.452.XXXX, and another 10,000 copper pairs between 478.445.XXXX and 478.453 .XXXX just in case, you are wrong. There is much “thinner “cable with way less number of copper pairs. Why? Because telephony is like Health insurance – a big gamble with the odds that LESS people will get sick while ALL insured will pay their premiums thus payments for service will be made and profit will be generated at the same time. And here the term TRUNK comes in use. The gamble here is that less people will dial OUTSIDE the local exchange than a pure “local” call. Same rule apply to calls outside the NPA i.e. Long Distance calls.

How this translates in to our situation? GMC have 220 telephone users in Milledgeville campus.

1. Business Office (everyone in the Educational area knows what the BO does – talks on the phone most of the time.)
2. Faculties (in class most of the time), doing “phone business” mostly returning voice mail calls
3. All others

After a long research, I went with a ¼ ratio i.e. one trunk line per every four phone users. Because OCS is now our local Exchange, we should not account for the “internal calls” – GMC user to GMC user but rather OCS – >PSTN and PSTN -> OCS. I got lucky; it worked perfectly for our situation. For the eight months of EV, our logs showed not more than 10 (ten) calls rejected due to “exceeding the trunk capacity” i.e. more than 40 people (our current number of concurrent calls in Milledgeville) attempted to use our SIP trunk (connection with the PSTN network).

A concurrent call trunk with our provider carries MRC of… $13.00 and so, the total (fixed – your CEO will love this) cost for our Milledgeville campus – $520.00 per month. Can I have Amen?!? A campus with 500 Middle/High School kids and their teacher, 2,500 students and their faculties plus the Business office, Admissions, Alumni etc. for $520.00 a month?!? Can I have Amen again?

More about our journey is to come in the next few days.

Follow the money!

Deep Throat was right! Just, in our case, nothing sweetens the life of the Management as a scratched line in the new budget. As IT guy, I have been pitching VoIP for about two years. Every time my boss sent me to “take a drug test”. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it… you know how it goes… However, one day our business office contacted me regarding an ISDN line in a remote office; I went to check what they are talking about and out local Phone Gate exploded. I carried the monthly phone bill with wheel barrel (all 700 pages of it) back to my office and spent next few days digging. You will be surprised what I found in it – charges for a phone service we considered “disconnected” (at least OUR record showed a disconnection order was placed), double charge for the same service (one remote office was charged for three Auto Attendant services and they were not aware of it), number of accounts charged for a Voice Mail box (the people did not knew they had one… hmm, wander if someone from the phone company decided they need one but forgot to inform them). In fact, we were paying for an ISDN line (active or not) located in a building that we no longer occupy. I am not implying it is always the Big Bad Phone Company that cheats. As we say in my native country, Bulgaria – “It is not crazy the one that eats the entire cake, but the one that gives it”. Long story short, our MRC was $10,000, effective charges varied month by month between $11,500 – $13,000 (not sure what your provider charges, but we were paying $250 when moving a user from one office to another and the “number” needed to be moved as well.)

We, at Georgia Military College, already had Office Communication Server R2 deployed and all roles but Enterprise Voice was used. For me, as IT guy, EV integrated with Exchange UM role was the logical choice for telephony solution for the college, just… my approach was wrong! Let me tell you a story. After many attempts, my VP managed to arrange a meeting with the President (sort of Grand Jury) where we presented our case. So, I am going to the meeting and as IT, got carried away talking about the beauty of Unified Communications – integration of presence, email, voice, voice mail, conferencing etc. After 15 minutes or so, the President goes “…why are you wasting my time with this…” and I almost had a hard attack. Fortunately, the second part of the presentation was about the money. Sweet topic, indeed. Needless to say, before the end of the presentation, I had the money for deployment on my disposal with the words – “I want this and I want this now”. Beware what you wish, I can add, but this is whole different story and I will blog about this later.

Today, eight months later, we are 100% OCS EV. Our MRC for phone service is $2,100 (remember $13,000 just few months ago?) and we are very close to our ROI point.

I started this blog to share our experience and hopefully help some colleagues to achieve their dream – Unified Communications at their work place.