IP Telephony Committee
Meeting notes 9.8.2005
The following individuals participated in a conference call meeting on Sept 8th 2005.
· Bill Dehaan (MCC)
· Heidi Little (Dist)
· Dorene Rekos-Kessler (GCC)
· Rebecca Ramirez (SMC)
· Rich Marmon (EMC)
· Victor Navarro (CGC)
· Tom Sanfilippo (Rio)
· Doug Harper (Dist)
Victor reviewed the agenda topics for the meeting and began the discussion by asking for feedback on the VoIP project assumptions. Dorene from GCC responded with concern with the statement "Any new facilities would design the infrastructure to accommodate IP Telephony instead of traditional TDM service". She along with Rich Marmon from EMC felt we should remove the phrase "instead of traditional TDM service" to eliminate potential contention for colleges to feel like they were forced into this change. Victor was uncomfortable with making this change due to a shift towards a position of non-committal, he reemphasized to the group that our charge is not to debate "if" we are committed to VoIP its more a question of implementation strategies. A compromise was reached by adding another statement that clarifies that a gradual migration to VoIP is suggested and colleges could plan on when they are ready to adopt this direction.
Action items review:
· Heidi for Jon Clark: Provide documentation for current phone environment to include inventory of phones (digital & analog) along with a report of phone feature capabilities. Break feature list into categories for "must have" and "nice to have". Heidi indicated there are over ### (forgot exact count) of features currently available and most of them are not used. She wasn’t prepared to share this list without further clarification. Group discussed the need to also expand this information to include WAN circuit design. This information is important if we move forward with developing an RFI document. Action item still pending
· Bill & Doug: Bill shared a first draft of the Instructure Readiness Check-list which will continue to be developed. Bill indicated he would provide more narrative description on each topic and approach this from a best practices perspective, although most of his reference materials will be biased towards Cisco. Victor indicated that from an infrastructure perspective as long as we stick to a best practices approach we can still remain open minded for an IP Telephony solution, and if you design the infrastructure well any IP Telephony solution will work. Action item still pending
· Victor: Position paper draft was presented to the group for feedback, the intention for this paper will be to share with appropriate groups as a directional document to clarify the work of our subcommittee. Victor expects to share this with TLC at the next monthly meeting for review and final comments. Unless there is further reason to review/update this after the TLC meeting in Sept, will consider this Action item completed.
IP Telephone planning phases:
Victor shared a planning model that he is interested in adopting as a foundation for developing our project plan. Rich commented this may be too structured and wondered if this model was really necessary. Further discussion ensued about this, ending with comments from Bill that supported adopting a project plan approach that will ultimately help with proposal funding for VoIP implementation projects. Based on this discussion will move forward with this planning as the basis for building out a project with activities related to each of the 5 phases.
Consulting role:
One of the issues that was discussed with no resolution in our first meeting was the role of a consultant in our planning process. Victor is interested in this bringing in a 3rd party to help in our planning early. Rich and Dorene had mentioned we need to be specific about what we are asking from a consultant and we should investigate our current channels through Gartner before we explore paid consultants. Victor mentioned that he has identified a consultant from a company called BCE Elix (Bell Canada) who is willing to come onsite to put on a free workshop to assess our communication interaction requirements that may help us justify service level enhancement capabilities in our VoIP scope.
Action item: Rich offered to investigate setting up an appointment using our Maricopa license with a Gartner Analyst. We will need to develop a list of questions as a group in preparation for this meeting. Regarding the BCE Elix Consultant, Victor mentioned he will share a document from the consultant for review and comment at our next meeting.
Additional items:
Rich shared with the group that Avaya is moving forward with a pilot evaluation with a limited # of phones starting with a Infrastructure assessment of his network. Questions from Victor and Bill about identifying measurable criteria Avaya is proposing that would demonstrate functionality beyond basic phone service. In particular NEC integration was mentioned by Bill about making sure their product can demonstrate this capability. In general the group was interested to hear about the results of this evaluation, Rich had mentioned he needs a production solution by early Spring 2006 timeframe.
Next Meeting will be determined by Rich Marmon's capability to setup a teleconference meeting with a Gartner Analyst.