Enterprise Technology By Phil Edholm

Older: 2007 Vision Video Series Posted
Newer: Thoughts to Paper

Voice Centralization Adoption

By Phil November 1, 2007 4:33 pm

I did a keynote address at the Insight 100 Fall Conference in Charlotte this week. The Insight 100 is the user group for customers deploying the Nortel CS2100 and SL-100 systems. There were over 100 customers from a wide variety of segments (finance, health care, government, education, etc.), typically with deployments from 20K plus at a single site to 200K with a centralized solution.

One interesting development that seemed to be taking place across the board is the use of a centralized model for new deployments. Much of the discussion was around the challenges of centralization and issues such as survivability and continuity.

Based on these interactions, I came to 2 conclusions:

The concept of a non-nodal VoIP system with all of the processing for control and many, if not all, of the PSTN access in centralized locations has become an accepted concept. While in the past, many VoIP deployments replicated the nodal PBX structure (turning a router into a call server for a site for example), this new model uses a centralized control and resource model with minimal if any nodal services.

The advent of SIP trunking from the carriers and simple SIP survivable proxies will accelerate this trend.

The interest level of these solutions is rising a dramatic rate. This business is seeing substantial growth. One thing that is interesting is that often they are taking a staged approach of retaining some of their nodal assets with the centralized control model and then gradually moving to VoIP everywhere. This enables an organization to move to the model without fork lifting existing assets (phones, trunks, and call servers) at a site while moving control functions to a centralized location. Then over time as sites move or change, the organization can move to VoIP based deployments with ease.

If this trend continues, it appears there may be a time, coming soon, where the voice/multimedia services are truly centralized with one (or 2) call server/SIP control points per organization, regardless of size. In this case the issues around availability and scale are critical, leading to why these organizations are focused on platforms that have those attributes.

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  1. erp news…

    We have very much promoted this type of business practice ourselves and am glad I came across your blog again. I have added you to our digg bookmarking account. Thanks!…

    January 31st, 2008 at 12:25 am from erp news

Comments

  1. Phil,

    Why is centralization important to these customers?

    I will be willing to wager that the adopters of these “centralized systems” have traditional hierarchical management silos reporting to an executive management team. Span of control is maintained in a eight to ten layer management structure (maybe even more). I would also venture a guess that each “silo” has it’s own IT (or at least IT lead) and own set of applications and services that don’t talk across the silos.

    I believe some in six-sigma land refer to this a “sub-optimal” :) ?

    Besides the obvious single points of failure and creation of artificial redundancy in non critical areas, the companies seem to be recreating the circuit switched network(they are familiar with and know how to manage) inside the IP (or more correctly the Ethernet) cloud and ignoring some well documented benefits of distribution.

    Honestly I find this too bad. There are a lot of problems (both business and societal) that could be addressed favorably by leveraging a more distributed, end-to-end model of business and networking. Yes, this does create new challenges for management, but I think learning to manage these challenges are not only important for personal development, but can create a significant competitive advantage for those companies who succeed.

    November 2nd, 2007 at 2:57 pm by many

  2. PS. would someone release my comment in the “Video Series Posted” thread? Apparently if there are links in the posing the post is held up for “moderation”?

    I don’t feel bad that there is a trust issue :)

    November 2nd, 2007 at 3:00 pm by many

  3. Many - I agree with your point about the non-technical barriers to centralization. However, the opportunity for companies like Nortel and their competitors is to engage at a senior enough level with solid business cases. Financial advantage is like water flowing down hill…it almost always prevails.

    The challenge for Nortel is to field people who know what they’re talking about and can engage at a business level - at a high enough level.

    November 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm by Paul Stevens

  4. Paul,

    I have seen a lot of water flowing uphill then :)

    I just wish I had the money some companies spend doing the same thing over and over, expecting and promoting different results.

    I think that one of the greatest barriers to product and process improvement is in the mind set of traditional control methods and hierarchies. IMO far too much money and effort is spent catching the bad employee rather than encouraging the good ones.

    November 4th, 2007 at 12:35 pm by many

  5. It would seem this is less of an organizational issue and more of a logical capability growing out of the virtulization made possible by Convergence. I agree, there is a key challenge to define what should be centralized versus distributed (accounting, manufacturing, etc.), though session management seems to fall into a category that lends itself to centralization.

    BTW, sorry on the post, I was traveling and my BU did not get in while I was out.

    November 7th, 2007 at 3:41 pm by Phil

  6. Phil.

    NP. I have come to realize most blogs are sensitive to embedded links. I agree this stuff probably needs to be vetted.

    It depends on what you deem “session management”. Policy, some rule sets and some state information is useful in a central location. However some of the stuff I see is really marginal integration and impedes functionality with added complexity. For example, systems can be designed so that traffic flows are combined into the fewest (simplest) possible categories or they can be broken into artificial domains controlled by corporate silos.

    The point being that networks designs almost always reflect the culture they are managed under. That is why I see it as an organizational issue.

    November 7th, 2007 at 5:19 pm by many

  7. Phil,

    An interesting comment that “We are currently allowing technology to demotivate people…..”

    http://www.computerweekly.com/Articles/2007/11/02/227921/deskbound-work-culture-stifles-productivity.htm

    November 7th, 2007 at 7:34 pm by many

  8. While I do not find it surprising that a headset manufacturer would drive research concluding that headsets are good, I use a headset almost exclusively for voice calling as it reduces strain on my neck and is clearer than a speakerphone. I do not have a wireless headset, but have been considering getting one to untether myself during calls.
    As to the productivity complaint/comment, it is a fairly interesting area. Is the accountant of today working on a computer more desk-bond than his counterpart of 30 years ago with a ledger and a calculator?
    Sedentary employees area a huge issue, and need to be addressed in some way through regular activity. However, in many ways this is less a reflection of technology rather than the changing nature of work as we have moved from an agrarian to industrial to information workforce. I am not sure technology per see is to blame, but rather that change in work that has moved many from jobs that involved movement to ones that are desk oriented.
    The question then is how we can use a combination of factors to alter the work day/space to transform physical inactivity to activity that enhances the work experience and does not impact productivity. One wonders if an automated desk that requires the user to stand for 30 minutes every 2 hours would have a positive impact (could be user defined). Or is the answer untethering the worker so movement can be more general. Would a work space consisting of different environments requiring different postures (sitting, laying, standing, kneeling improve. I have taken my PC to the exercise bike to watch a streaming video while I ride, could a part of the work day be on an exercise device while still working (treadmill, bike, etc.). Perhaps it is time to think about how an active Knowledge/Information worker environment can be created that enhances productivity could be built. If such an environment allowed the worker to do the task while getting exercise it could be very practical.
    Finally, walking around is not only exercise it is socialization. Years ago we created a virtual space based communications platform at Nortel and one of the concepts was to have a space that was the virtual water cooler. Te rules of the virtual water cooler were that if you came in and I was there we could talk about anything but business. The idea is to create a socialization space that is real-time so individuals not physically together can from the bonds often lacking.

    November 8th, 2007 at 2:35 am by Phil

  9. IT centralization is generally seen as the path to lowest TCO. As IT and telecom converge around a software centric (vs network-centric) model, centralization of IP telephony becomes an even more appealing architectural option. That’s the view of our partnerships with MSFT and IBM. Nodal telephony emerged at a time when work was defined by place; today mobility and virtual work groups transform work as something you do, not somewhere you go.

    I explore some of these topics in my blog at:
    http://blog.tmcnet.com/the-hyperconnected-enterprise/

    November 8th, 2007 at 7:45 am by Tony Rybczynski

  10. Phil,

    I remember the same exercises involving the virtual water cooler as a part of the “future forum”.

    I agree with what you said, and offer one more statement from the article that resonated with me; “Older workers are complaining about the longer hours they have to work, while younger workers want technology to be more suited to their working practices,”…. Without revealing what category I fall into, I think that this statement reveals the frustration that both groups have when they see what is possible, while still enduring the traditional management model.

    All those executive MBA’s haven’t changed things for the better, have they?

    BTW the wireless headset is da bomb :) Although I am now in search of one that is worn exclusively on the head.

    BTW, is the clock off by an hour on this server or is it in *way* eastern Canada?

    November 8th, 2007 at 9:41 am by many

  11. Tony,

    While I agree the TCO is reduced, the impacts are not solely network operating costs. The point is that more than ever a network has the ability to affect parts of the business outside of the IT/Telecom silo.

    A well designed network should lower TCO in most cases, but it should also enable employees to be productive, reduce duplication, allow services and applications to trade data and context and become a competitive advantage as a part of any core business and products. If you concentrate solely on the bottom line and do not address the potential for top line productivity, I think you are missing at least half the potential.

    Didn’t Nortel make the same mistake in the late 1990’s aggressively selling kit to one organizational vertical only to have it killed later by another? If you sell kit to finance, operations won’t like it, if you sell it to IT…….well everyone hates IT :)

    The solution is hard, but to my mind the “Centralized IT” or “Centralized Voice Server” is reacting rather than leading. In truth a Voice Server has many parts; AAA Policy, Gateways, Border Control, Services Platforms, and probably Interaction/coexistance Policies, as well as OAM/FCAPS. So for any organization some questions should be what is likely to change? How do the organization goals truely benefit from the technology?

    November 8th, 2007 at 12:02 pm by many

  12. Phil
    Great to see you on the wire again!
    Hope you are well.
    I am very interested and have an eye on how centralization will take place when the major manufacturers (even the little guys)have merely “replicated” their digital protocols to “proprietary VOIP” ones. I don’t mean that to be taken as jaded. I am very bullish. As people move from digital to “line-side voip w/ PSTN GW’s and then onto SIP I see many islands being created and very few being consolidated as one would think IP would have done. Is UC actually unifying anything worth-while? Take a look at SIP. With one alteration of a SIP extension one basically becomes proprietary. Add encryption, yet again one flip of an encryption key character and boom, might as well be proprietary. I am cheering for it, don’t get me wrong. However, I have a keen eye on how anyone can make money, provide competitve differentiate (not only to the vendor) but for those customers that use tech as an edge in their respective verticals. It’s hard to create a compelling reason to advance technology migration and buy VOIP if everyone has the same offer. My point is that it may prove to be hard to centralize anything without a common offer. Catch you in the airport man!

    November 8th, 2007 at 5:09 pm by Joe

  13. Joe brings up an interesting point. It would seem to me that the integration of islands is driven first within the organization, while the federation that will require inter-organizational island connectivity will follow as two things happen, first that more organizations adopt the SIP model, and as interoperability in SIP is defined and created between vendors.
    When this happens then there will be demand for secure federation.

    November 9th, 2007 at 12:55 pm by Phil

  14. The real reason seems to be that customers are fed up with a distributed world of and using call servers at the edge. For small to large deployments it just means more cost as the all the technology needs to be understood by the remote department folks. Creating technology solutions is easy but the adoption of it across a organization is a bigger challenge. Over the life time of such solution getting deployed across multiple sites would mean additional costs in actually maintaining such solutions.

    A centralized solution becomes easily managed from a call control perspective. Imagine if you could configure globally but implement locally. It means far more control for most business.

    Another thing that most people forget, that the days of multiple departments making buying decisions on important Technology Solutions is a thing of the past. The CIO’s hate that and would try to remove them.

    Imagine having a SAP solution for department 1, Oracle Peoplsoft for Department 2 and a third ERP solution for another department 3. .. Hope you are getting the idea.

    So in the future I would see more Voice getting centralized deployments

    November 12th, 2007 at 1:00 am by Avijeet

  15. Interesting announcement today.

    http://www2.nortel.com/go/news_detail.jsp?cat_id=-8055&oid=100231912&locale=en-US

    “IBM and Nortel will market communications-enabled solutions comprised of services, the Nortel software based foundation environment, IBM software and services and multiple hardware platforms including IBM BladeCenter and System X servers. Together, Nortel and IBM are initially targeting companies in the healthcare and retail markets.”

    I wonder if this is a centralized or de-centralized solution? Sounds de-centralized to me :)

    I wonder how the competition between “Blade Server” and ATCA will play?

    I wonder how or if this affects the Microsoft alliance?

    Targeting market vertical is important, it allows a company to hit market sweet spots where capital is available and gain valuable experience. As with Centrex, many lesions learned translate to other verticals with little effort.

    November 14th, 2007 at 2:58 pm by many

  16. The IBM relationship referred to here is focused primarily to enterprises and fits within a SOA model (why blade servers are more important than ATCA in this space). It is more data center focused and is designed to enable business process based applications to more effectively use communications and network resources (back end process applications such as Order Entry or Delivery). A significant value is the strong market position that IBM has in the SOA space (45-57% market share depending on the analyst). However, in my view this is the second phase of Unified Communications.

    The ICA relationship with Microsoft is focused at the desktop productivity environment (Office, Outlook, Word, etc.) and how to bring the power and availability/dependability of traditional and IP based telecommunications systems into the first phase of Unified Communications. This partnership is designed to enable users to integrate communications into their personal business processes, while the IBM is more focused to larger corporate processes. A significant reason this relationship happened in 2006 was the view that this market would emerge first, while the SOA/Communications space would be about 18 months later.

    Nortel will work closely with both Microsoft and IBM for both personal and business Unified Communications. This is because we fundamentally believe that this next wave of convergence is not about phones and cell phones and video (though those are important), but about how information and interaction come together to redefine business processes. Just as information technology changed business processes in the 90s, Information and interaction is poised to do the same in the next 5-10 years. And we are very focused to assure that Nortel will have a key role in the emerging landscape of vendors and solution providers.

    November 14th, 2007 at 5:24 pm by Phil

  17. So, in a nutshell; the IBM relationship is more about backoffice data and IT support tools that record, measure, quantify and trend, while the MS relationship is more focused on front end desktop tool integration that employees use everyday. Is that correct?

    November 14th, 2007 at 9:22 pm by many

  18. Exactly, while both relationships extend across the whole piece, we are focusing on the areas of strength for each and ho work together to create strategic value for our customers and the marketplace.

    November 15th, 2007 at 12:45 pm by Phil

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