UCI VoIP Migration Strategy
Summary: Primarily due to cost considerations, OIT has changed our VoIP migration strategy. Rather than replacing the Ericsson PBX with a Cisco IP telephony system, OIT plans to upgrade the Ericsson system.
Current UCI Telephone System
UCI currently has what is considered to be a traditional circuit-switched private branch exchange (PBX) telephone system based on telephone system architecture that has been developed refined for decades. It is extremely reliable and robust proven technology. The current system is an Ericsson MD110.
The MD110 was installed in the early 80s and has been upgraded to the latest hardware and software every 2-3 years to present. These upgrades have allowed OIT to continue to provide many basic and advanced features, and have provided increasingly enhanced system management capabilities. The system is paid for and still has a long useful life. The current operating system version is called BC11.
The MD110 continues to provide reliable telephone service and advanced features that meet the needs of most UCI clients. Ericsson currently offers an upgrade option that significantly increases the useful life of the system, and adds full support for IP telephony. If upgraded, the Ericsson system will be able to continue to support the existing non-IP telephones, and to support IP phones as needed. This puts UCI in a good position because it reduces the pressure to rush into a “forklift replacement” of the MD110. A forklift replacement would involve completely replacing the existing PBX telephone system and all the telephones, in a very short period of time, with a new VoIP system and new IP telephones. This would be an extremely expensive and time intensive upgrade. It would require a significant upgrade of UCInet, and emergency backup power systems (UPS systems and generators) would need to be installed to provide backup power to all UCInet network devices (Ethernet routers and switches). OIT has estimated the cost of a forklift upgrade to be a minimum of $8 million. Most industry analysts, and even VoIP vendors support the notion of a systematic migration to VoIP rather than a forklift upgrade.
VoIP Plan
In preparation for an eventual migration to IP telephony, OIT plans to continue to invest in the network and in backup power systems for the network. These investments will be required to make the network IP telephony-ready regardless of which vendor’s solution we select. In new buildings, we plan to design the network infrastructure to be IP telephone-ready, and we are currently installing Cisco IP phones in new buildings.
VoIP Migration Strategy
Until early 2009, OIT had been planning to continue a migratory replacement of the Ericsson system with the Cisco IP telephony solution. Because of the high cost of upgrading the network and backup power systems required to support IP phones campus-wide, and because of tough economic conditions and reduced budgets, OIT consulted with the campus and decided to change our strategy. Rather than continuing to move toward a replacement of the Ericsson system with the Cisco IP telephony solution, OIT has decided to upgrade the Ericsson system.
Note: in 2008, Ericsson was purchased by Aastra, http://www.aastra.com
The current strategy, as of April 2009, is to seek funding to perform a major upgrade of the Ericsson system that will make it a modern hybrid IP-PBX phone system that is supportable, will accommodate telephone growth, will support new features and functionality, will continue to support existing Ericsson phones, will provide full support for Ericsson IP phones and “generic” SIP phones, and will have a more reliable system design with fewer single points of failure. This upgrade is called the MX-ONE™ Telephony Server.
This is a very cost-effective strategy that limits risk and provides a complete migration path to IP telephony. This upgrade is significantly less expensive than a replacement of the Ericsson system and phones with a complete IP telephony solution. It allows us to postpone the expensive upgrades to the network and backup power systems, and the cost of replacing all of the phones that would be required to support a campus-wide IP telephony deployment. It allows us to migrate to IP phones when and where it makes sense to do so.
Until we are able to secure funding and upgrade the system, we plan to continue to install Cisco IP phones in new buildings. After the upgrade is complete, we will need to decide if it makes sense to continue to install IP phones in new buildings, and if those IP phones will be from Cisco or Ericsson (Aastra).
