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Going VoIP . . . with little Cisco gear
2007-04-20
Ex-Cisco engineer Dave Cote has ambitious plans for Stanley Works' global VoIP network: hundreds of sites and potentially tens of thousands of Session Initiation Protocol phones. But the project will involve little gear sporting his old employer's logo.
The tool maker in January began a companywide rollout of VoIP servers from Interactive Intelligence. The plan is to use a centrally hosted VoIP model to consolidate a network built on hundreds of disparate PBX and key telephone systems, acquired over 20-plus years as Stanley bought almost a dozen other companies.
"Stanley Works hired me to come in and upgrade all of that, and I think, to put in all Cisco VoIP gear, says Cote, who ran Cisco's Voice Technology Group test lab in Boxboro, Mass., for six years prior to heading the global telecommunications group at Stanley last year. "I'm sure Cisco [expected that] too, but that just didn't make sense to me with this business and how it operates." The approach he's chosen could save the company up to $4 million (or $400 per user) over a single-vendor network.
Stanley's VoIP toolbox
Before Cote came to Stanley, the company already started down the VoIP path with a Cisco CallManager-based VoIP system for a large Midwest call center. Instead of building out this network to the rest of the company, Cote plans to deploy Interactive Intelligence call center and IP PBX servers at three central data centers in Connecticut, Indiana and Texas. From these spots, VoIP services will extend worldwide over an MPLS-based IP VPN service the company is turning on with carrier Level 3.
From his vendor days at Cisco, Cote's under-the-hood knowledge of VoIP products and technology is reflected in some of the tools he is using in the project at Stanley. Cote is building the Stanley VoIP network with call processing, gateway and handset technologies from a variety of sources — some well-known, others not.
"There are so many systems out there, it's kind of overwhelming," Cote says. "The reason I picked [Interactive Intelligence] was not for the fact that we needed to get something out there right away. They'd done a lot of [product development for large-scale VoIP], and they've been in the game for a long time."
The core of the project starts with Interactive Intelligence's Customer Interaction Center (CIC), a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-based automated call distributor platform with call center features. Stanley is also using Interactive Intelligence's SIP Interaction Media Server, a SIP-based IP PBX for office users. Stanley has already started deploying to some of its call center agents on the Interactive Intelligence suite, while connecting small sales offices (around 50 workers per site) to the system for regular business telephony services.
Since the corporatewide MPLS network isn't fully in place yet, Cote says, some sites are linking to the Interactive Intelligence servers through the company's existing WAN. Very small offices without T-1 connections use SSL VPN. (The company's SSL gear, as well as LAN and WAN equipment, is mostly Cisco-based). These workers appear and work as if part of a larger corporate dial plan, as calls are set up and managed via the IP network, but voice traffic is routed over the public switched telephone network (PSTN).
"The bandwidth for that is really minimal," Cote says. VoIP signaling traffic is lighter than Web browsing or e-mail traffic for a single user, he says.
Cote is using VoIP gateways from Audiocodes, which makes gear mostly for use by VoIP equipment vendors. In New Britain, Conn., Audiocodes Mediant 1000 T-1 SIP gateways connect the Interactive Intelligence servers to time division multiplexing gear and the PSTN. The Mediant 1000s also sit in remote offices, connecting the sites to local PSTN service.
Over the next two years, Stanley plans to deliver VoIP call control and voice traffic to as many as 10,000 employees across the company in the United States and Europe. Redundant Interactive Intelligence servers — which run on Windows machines — will be deployed in as many as four data centers, which will provide redundancy for and VoIP connectivity to over 300 locations, via Level 3 MPLS links.
The Interactive Intelligence servers — HP/Intel dual-core machines — run Intel's Host Media Processor (HMP) software, which allows the server CPUs to process and optimize VoIP signaling protocols, such as SIP, and voice compression codecs, such as G.729 and G.7l1. The software, Cote says, "lets you run voice services on the CPU, without using any external board in the server for call processing. It just runs right off the processor."
Instead of using dedicated call processing hardware, the software approach will allow the company to grow gradually. As groups of 500 users come on the VoIP network, Cote will add more HMP software licenses, instead of plugging in more cards or call processors, he says.
Filing down VoIP costs
The VoIP software licensing and server support are the biggest cost areas in running the Cisco environment, Cote says. Stanley's Indiana office supports around 600 employees with 10 to 12 Cisco call servers, which must be maintained and upgraded regularly. "With the Interactive Intelligence platform,' Cote adds, the same amount of users "can run pretty much … off of just a couple basic Intel boxes."
The per-user software licensing will also be less costly with the Interactive Intelligence system, Cote says; around $ 400 per seat, vs. $ 600 to $ 700, when compared with a similar Cisco and Avaya IP telephony package. Part of the savings will come from the ability to shop around for IP phones, instead of installing handsets and call server hardware from one provider.
"If you buy the servers Cisco sells with its logos on them, they're quite a bit more than if you just get machines from HP," Cote says. Polycom, handsets, among others, are being considered.
Some VoIP vendors say pure SIP implementations lack certain business telephony features which users are accustomed to — such as signaling the "message waiting" light on an IP phone when a voice mail is waiting. So far in tests and rollouts to around 600 users, Cote says there are no snags to report.
"I have not heard of any problems or issues about shortcomings in terms of SIP's features," he says. He does anticipate SIP will allow for better integration between Stanley's existing Cisco IP call center deployment and the evolving Interactive Intelligence rollout.
"Cisco now has SIP firmware for all of their IP phones as well," he says. "That will tie in nicely" to the current rollout.
Extreme makeover call center edition
Although Stanley acquired many of its well-known brands decades ago — Bostitch, MAC Tools, Husky Tools, Monarch Mirrors and Doors — the integration of these companies into a single telephony infrastructure, or even a consolidated customer call center, has been slow.
"Each company traditionally was kind of its own company — with no centralized telecom decisions being made, which in today's world, doesn't really make a whole heck of a lot of sense," Cote says.
Cote says the company is consolidating its contact centers and cross-training its call center agents on customer service for all Stanley brands. Interactive Intelligence's CIC software will provide a single system image for call centers in Europe and regions of North America. "As we roll out the call center optimization project, [agents will have access] to disparate databases, to let more than one agent handle more than one type of call."
Forging ahead
In home remodeling, they say you never know what you'll find behind a wall, until you tear it down. Cote is having similar realizations as he delves into Stanley's' various manufacturing, sales and back-office locations to discover what phone systems the sites are running.
"One thing I have learned is that on the larger sites, since our landscape is so disparate, is how little information we have on each site," Cote says. "It makes it kind of difficult."
Variations in cabling infrastructures, power and cooling systems and other systems, such as overhead paging systems, were a surprise every time, on early installations, Cote says. "So we've done a comprehensive site survey as part of the rollout. That's the biggest thing we've learned to do."
Cote has six sites on the Interactive Intelligence platform, and he expects to convert several sites per month, with a goal of having over 200 sites on the system by 2010.
"Once the MPLS network is done, it will make it a lot easier to roll out the VoIP solution," he says. "I keep thinking, 2010, wow — it sounds a long way off, but it's only two-and-a-half years away."
The tool maker in January began a companywide rollout of VoIP servers from Interactive Intelligence. The plan is to use a centrally hosted VoIP model to consolidate a network built on hundreds of disparate PBX and key telephone systems, acquired over 20-plus years as Stanley bought almost a dozen other companies.
By Phil Hochmuth
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