ISC Networking & Telecommunications Migrating from Centrex to IP Telephony at Penn Deke Kassabian University of Pennsylvania

ISC Networking & Telecommunications About Penn University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university in Philadelphia 20,000 students (undergraduate & graduate) 4,000 faculty & 13,000 staff 250 buildings 30 RDPs (telephony points of presence) 23,000 phone lines & 41,000 IP addresses

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Some Background Networking & Telecom organization merger in 2000, with full integration over the course of the following four years Environment: Centrex +Penn-owned cable 4 exchanges, 1 area code 5 digit dialing on campus

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Business Drivers Aging voice cable infrastructure and voice mail components Moves/adds/changes – inflexible and costly Wish to increase operational efficiencies Prefer vendor independence Prefer open standards Prefer open source

ISC Networking & Telecommunications The Organization Consciously avoided silos through integration of Data/Voice staff with similar jobs –Operations –Engineering, New Service Development –Finance and Billing –Customer Service Some staff reductions took place New organization is fully integrated, and increasingly well cross-trained New organization also includes Video group

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Considering our Next Steps Wanted to make a business move to deliver highly flexible and cost-effective telephony with a longer horizon Had a track record of success with open source communications software What would it take to seriously pursue this approach?

ISC Networking & Telecommunications The Breakthrough Project launch meeting with managers & team leads Identified biggest issues Committed significant local staff resources Hired project manager

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Project Teams Steering Committee Technical Network Architecture Application Architecture Telephony Architecture FacilitiesProcess Installations Operations Intake Support Billing Provisioning BusinessCommunications

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Internal Pilot Campus Pilot Roll out production pilot within our own department Structure installations to be cookie cutter Train Centrex staff to be VoIP specialists Start punch-list management Continue to evaluate and adjust

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Challenges “Recruiting” pilot customers –That fit the service profile –That are in a suitable building –That are willing to work with a pilot, providing useful feedback Supportable Handsets –Single line & multi line sets –Multiple Manufactures

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Open Source Strategy Avoid over-customization –Use existing functionality where possible –Maintain active relationship with developers –Try to get any essential changes built back into mainline code Notable Asterisk customization –IMAP access to voice mail message store for true unified messaging –Penn developed extension to Asterisk, likely to be included in 1.4 with Summer 2006 release

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Current State of Service Production-grade –Redundant servers, gateways and PRIs –Single-line features, /voic integration –911 support equal to legacy system layer 2 QoS, separate VLANs & subnets Full service- installation, support & billing

ISC Networking & Telecommunications VoIP Topology

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Campus-wide Pilot Rollout

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Success 400+ subscribers, 500 scheduled by June Network Architecture Team Process re-engineering Site/server failover recovery Open-source software (SER, Asterisk)

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Penn iPhone Web Services (Phase 1.0) Self-service Voice mail Change Password Do Not Disturb Call Forward Reject Anon. Blocked Caller ID More...

ISC Networking & Telecommunications

Lessons Learned Pilot one technology at a time (open-source vs. in house commercial vs IP centrex) Deliver service components in phases, to compatible customers Create/maintain a voice development environment Use Centrex staff to manage VoIP installations Pilot support services & involve customers

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Make project a priority across the organization Deliver a production pilot Cross-train staff, and allow time for adjustment Augment staff with consultants in key areas Technology is evolving: let current state determine project scope Recommendations

ISC Networking & Telecommunications Migrating from Centrex to IP Telephony at Penn Deke Kassabian University of Pennsylvania