Year: 2011

If you haven’t heard yet, there’s a new kid on the block as it relates to connecting dial tone to your phone switch. Nearly all of the traditional service providers (and even some new ones) have come up with some sort of SIP offering for PSTN connectivity. However, seeing as the technology is still in an embryonic stage when compared to its ISDN forefathers, each service provider seems to have their own little tweaks to SIP delivery.

Now, not every PBX or phone switch out there is ready to support SIP dial tone…which, in my opinion, should be the second thing you investigate. The first and most important question to ask is “What does SIP offer to my company that traditional TDM based dial tone does not?”

To illustrate this important point, let’s go back a few years – the birth of VoIP. Back in those days, a little more than a decade ago now, Cisco led the charge in converging TDM based voice technologies onto a packetized, often IP driven, data networks. In doing so, we all became ever so aware of some of the risks and more importantly the risk mitigation techniques needed to be employed to make the conversion plausible. While we got the benefit of toll bypass, we picked up the responsibility of assuring an even level of service to RTP streams across our wide area network – quality of service (QoS). While we assumed all the advantages of a single PBX instance for an entire enterprise, we acquired the responsibility for providing local call processing for a remote site when a network failure occurs.
Some had to learn these lessons through hard knocks. So, my question is to you, how will you learn from history and avoid being doomed to repeat it? I have a few suggestions…

1. Start with a solid business case (or lack thereof) for a SIP rollout. From my position, I see two strong cases:

   a. Cost Savings – I have a few clients who have multiple remote sites that require PRIs for functional reasons, but may not have the usage requirements to support 23 bearer channels. A regional bank is probably the best illustration of this. While a bank branch may need DID, DNIS, addressable CLID functionality, they typically will have fewer than 3 or 4 concurrent calls during any period of the work day. So in this case, if we can bring those 3 or 4 talk paths onto a data circuit and relieve the cost of the PRI loop, we can save some money.

   b. Disaster Recovery – This is a big one. When you have a site or a remote PBX go down, you have few options to get those numbers re-routed to another site and avoid the “All circuits are busy” message being played repeatedly to your customers. At best, you can call your service provider and request an emergency call forward on a few numbers which typically gets put in place within a few hours – just in time for your circuit to come back online…wash, rinse, repeat. With SIP, most carriers allow for backup IP addressing for where a call is delivered to your network. This gives us the flexibility to offer at least one other point of entry to the network for those numbers…without having to call a soul.

2. TEST, TEST, TEST and then TEST some more. Seeing as most of these service offerings come from providers who are already offering you data services today, it stands to reason that you could have a few test numbers lit up and use those to test. Some key items you will want to watch out for – voice quality, DTMF exchange (call into an IVR), call forwarding and outbound CLID preservation. Once you think everything is working fine, port a few DIDs for a few users. Nothing says you need to cut an entire site or even a heavily used number the first time.
3. Pick a good partner. SIP cutovers don’t always go as smoothly as you might like. You’ll want to have a partner who has done a number of these cuts before and is adamant about having a solid reversion plan. If you’re having trouble finding one, give me a call…I should have a recommendation or two.

Techumanity is an ideal that we embrace at TBL Networks.  We often discuss this concept in terms of how technology can be used to make us more human.  Other times, we use it as a justification to play golf and raise money for a great cause.

On Friday, March 11, TBL Networks hosted our 2nd Annual Virtual Open Golf Tournament. Whereas a traditional golf tournament in March would be at the mercy of the elements, a few Nintendo Wii Systems allowed us to convert the confines of TBL Headquarters into a climate-controlled TPC Blue Monster. Using Cisco WebEx, we generated a live leader board so players could keep track of the scores. In addition, participants received the chance to check the onsite technology, including our Cisco TelePresence 1100 rooms.

This year, TBL Networks received the privilege to benefit a great organization in CJ’s Thumbs Up Foundation, better known as CJSTUF.  CJSTUF’s mission is to provide financial assistance to families of children with chronic and life-threatening illness.   CJSTUF embraces techumanity by using their blog, FaceBook and Twitter pages to raise awareness and funds for their mission.

We would to like everyone who came out to our event and contributed to our cause.  Thanks to our corporate partners Cisco, VMware and EMC for helping make our day possible. Special thanks to our local sponsors Bogeys Sports Park, Chick-fil-A Parham Rd  FSU and the Richmond Flying Squirrels.  With their help, we were able to raise $2,275 for CJSTUF.

To learn about CJSTUF, check out their website, and stay tuned to the TBL Networks Blog Home, where we will be providing more information about this great organization in coming weeks.

TBL prides itself on designing solutions for our clients that allow their employees to connect to each other in ways that improve the quality and speed of interaction. Business isn’t just conducted over the phone and e-mail anymore. As technology infiltrates our lives as consumers, we see the benefits it has on our personal interactions, and naturally begin to integrate it into our work lives. Instant Messaging and Text Messaging are two such examples that are almost common to most workplace environments these days. Ten years ago it would have been difficult to find many occurrences of either for business, but we were all seeing the benefits of IM’ing and texting to stay in touch with our friends and family.

Today, we have moved beyond IM at home, and Skype is the predominant way we keep in touch with loved ones. And not just on the PC – every cell phone commercial on television boasts the ability to video call across the network. Yes, video is nothing new to the enterprise – we are all familiar with rolling cart video conferencing, or even the newer immersive room video systems, but video isn’t pervasive at the desk… yet. Solutions are just being introduced that are pushing video to every user on every device, and not just for live interaction. Any message that needs to be delivered is enhanced by video. Portals for video sharing, a corporate YouTube, now allow the publishing on content in a controlled authenticated, and searchable way that is suitable for corporations. Video will soon be a part of daily interactions in the workplace.

I was recently introduced to a woman who studies the use of technology by society. Amber Case refers to herself as a Cyborg Anthropologist. While a traditional anthropologist studies the tools ancient civilizations used to extend the physical self, Amber philosophizes on how modern man uses technology as tools to extend the mental self. We teleport ourselves around the world in an instant with global communications networks, can interact with acquaintances even when they are not online, and store a lifetime worth of memories on a device in the palm of our hand. It is technology that allows us to do this, but humanity that urges us to want to. If technology didn’t allow us to improve to way we interact with other humans, we wouldn’t use it. At TBL, we coined the phrase techumanity to describe the way technology allows people to connect in ways that are more human.

Amber gets techumanity, and we think it is pretty cool.