Campus Unified Communications

Transcription

1 Campus Unified Communications Theory, Vision, and Practice Charley Kline, Information Technology Architect, CITES Tony Rimovsky, Associate Director Enterprise Infrastructure, CITES

2 All About the Internet Ignoring its florid history and evolution, the Internet is just a data transport system IP deals in packets, TCP deals in streams of binary data organized into (mostly) pairwise streams So any communication that can be represented that way can use the Internet to carry it

3 Human Communication Forms Writing (written language) Voice (spoken language) Pictures / Drawings Video (moving pictures)

4 / IM One of the original electronic communications The first on the Internet Text messages Mailing lists MIME led to multimedia content Often confused as a file transport and storage mechanism

5 Telephony Also one of the originals Designed and envisioned as point-to-point Also completely analog for most of its life

6 Telephony Once IP was embraced as a transport mechanism, things happened fast to reinvent the technology gw PSTN

7 Pictures / Drawings Worth a thousand words GIF -> JPEG et al Speed of Internet made possible in the early 90 s

8 Video (moving pictures) Worth ten thousand words? Quality varies from talking head to very convincing immersion Fundamentally also analog Hardest to digitize (bandwidth + computation) But commonplace today

9 Presence Maybe the newest yet most obvious Communication about where I am, what I m doing, if I m available Affords choice to others about a bewildering array of communication options Can be as oppressive or as freeing as we want it to be

10 Technology Convergence Calendar Voic Telephony Voice Chat IM Presence The various ways we communicate have naturally coalesced over time, approaching convergence Common transport afforded by the Internet was the key This began happening ad hoc and organically but towards the end became harder and more coordinated

11 Technology Convergence Calendar Exchange + UM Voic Telephony UC Voice Chat IM Presence Lync (OCS)

12 and Calendar Integrated Voic (Unified Messaging) Telephony, IM, Presence Unified Communications UC

13 Why this particular solution Other IP Telephony and convergence solutions exist, but Most are from carriers (Nortel, NEC, etc.) and carriers approach solutions from a carrier point of view Notable exception was Cisco, but they approach things from a Cisco point of view

14 Why this particular solution No cost savings non-starter Needed flexibility in 5-9 s decisions such as power, network isolation, etc. Wanted to leverage existing investments in network and / server/storage infrastructures

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16 High Level Architecture User Desktop or Laptop / calendar client (Outlook, Mail, ical, etc) Campus Data Network CITES Server Infrastructure Exchange Servers Exchange Servers Exchange Servers Communicator Client Lync Servers OCS Servers Communicator Phone Appliance Public Telephone Network

17 Clients (Outlook, Mac, browser) CITES SLB / GLB HT HT HT CAS CAS CAS MBX MBX MBX Inexpensive nonredundant storage Inexpensive nonredundant storage RRB Node 9 F&S DC Inexpensive nonredundant storage

18 Unified Communications Transitions Getting There From Here

19 The Challenges Migrate all faculty/staff/grad/ professional students to UC Impacts everyone Support is de-centralized Wide variety of support needs Change impacts both computing and telephony This level of centralized computing is new to the campus

20 New and different Express is not going away in a month Organization-based migration structure Voice means this impacts everyone and it isn t optional We have governance ATAG AOAG You all are part of the process

21 Teamwork We have to work together You know the people and your environment You all are the front line We need to support you as much as we need to provide the infrastructure Partnership improves efficiencies

22 The Approach College-by-college transition Approximate groupings Some organizational units don t fit this model well. We are working laying out the breakdowns. Auxiliaries, Allied agencies, VCR, non-academic units Two stages Voice Special communities: graduate/ professional students, retires, existing CITES exchange, retirees

23 Order of colleges ATAG is chartered, in part, to help build the order Many factors to consider Technical pragmatics Calendar issues Support levels within units Non-college groupings

24 Timing The big target: July 1, 2012 Undergraduates Done (essentially) Exchange 2007 to 2010 Between now and start of spring term, 2011 Retirees Starting now. Ending by July, 2011 Graduate/professional students Starting in spring, ending July, 2011 College-by-college Starting now.

25 Questions Retirees Specifications Small number of computers out of hardware spec based on epo data. ~400 current exchange users at Office 2003 or lower (but 2000ish using IMAP, OWA or other) Regular phones or computers? What about thin clients and/or mobile phones? Multiline phone functionality Calendar policy Special exceptions Retain regular POTS lines Keeping servers A word on non-exceptional exceptions